151–160 of 175 posts
So, the RPC-4000 version of blackjack seems lost, but the LGP-30 version exists (and can be run on simh). I've disassembled and partly annotated it, and found that it too has a sort of cheat switch. The LGP-30 has no source of randomness to use as a seed. From loading the program, if the player plays optimally, the games will all be the same. Over the first few dozen games, the player ends up in the hole (IIRC, notic…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow-- that's really awesome-- a very deep generalist curriculum. This is along the lines of what I'd like to ultimately create. It's hard, though, because I am offering this in the form of electives, and students have limited slots to fill and as they get older their willingness to take any risk in selecting a class decreases. I teach in both high school and middle school, and I've found I can be a lot "bolder" in wh…
IMHO middle and high school do not have the life focus and specialization yet. Hacking on a microprocessor trainer is no fun and definitely does not bring you anything if you are not in CS and even then you can survive without.
I did give them system calls to draw sprites and things on the LCD.
My students had fun competing over all the challenges. Scored very well in the anonymous post-class surveys, too, though I did have one critical score. Also the majority of the students from that class are electing at least one of my classes next year.
Each year I teach one "crazy" class with undergraduate level material to MS students. This year it's going to be circuits. They're going to learn KCL/KVL, transistor biasing, oscillators, amplifiers and gates, how to use decoders and logic gates to spell things on 7seg displays, etc.
> definitely does not bring you anything if you are not in CS
I think knowing what a computer actually is is valuable information to know.
> IMHO middle and high school do not have the life focus and specialization yet.
That's one of the nice things about having an elective-heavy school. They do a deep class on computer architecture, then they go participate in a musical, then they take a 3d art class. Immerse yourself deeply in lots of things to see what's interesting and to get exposure to many ideas.
To be complete on old programmer's lore, don't miss "Real programmers don't use PASCAL": https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html And of course, "The rise of 'Worse is Better'": https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs240/old/sp2014/readings/wor...
The Story of Mel was likely in direct response to "Real programmers don't use PASCAL", or potentially another very similar "Real Programmers" writing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And his reason for starting with machine language? “Well, you can’t expect anyone to understand what’s really going on in higher-level languages if you don’t know what’s happening underneath, right?” Worked for me. I teach a middle school class called "Computer Organization and Design". It's basically from gates and truth tables, up to implementing ALU functions, to understanding bits of sequential logic... then so…
Amazing! And it parallels the early learning my peer group and I experienced in the 80's. We had Apple 2 type computers to work with and a small group of us were split off to do a deeper dive education. And really it was a sort of student guided education. Basically, the teacher asked is to declare what we were going to try and do and that was more about making sure we did something besides play games than it was any…
I've always loved this story as a tribute to the early hacker ethos. So easy to forget how high up the stack we live these days. There are a few other gems at this site, in the "hacker folklore" appendix. http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/index.html I like "How to Become a Hacker", and the AI Koans too. Lots of good stuff there. These old pages have a certain biblical magic to them. I love our field! Long live the hack…
"It took me two weeks to figure it out"
Leaving a no-documentation time bomb for your successor is not to be celebrated, nor IMO is it a hackerish thing to do.
Sadly we have strayed to the other extreme. From "every instruction is precious" right over to, "who cares how many instructions I use?" Nowadays, desktop apps which started in an instant 20 years ago, seem to take several seconds even before they are even doing anything useful like loading a project or whatever. Even things like Visual Studio looking through the MRU project list can take 10 seconds (probably a threa…
Agreed. My #1 annoyance these days, because it is so egregious, is Electron apps. I guess because the only language some programmers know is Javascript, of which I know little but what little I know places it marginally above PHP in intrinsic horror. So people write standalone apps in a language intended for tweaking web pages, meaning that to deploy those apps requires embedding an entire web browser into every app.…
It is readable unlike php, dynamic as root from lisp, wide use and hence accessible.
But given its original history and neglect, it takes decade to fix all issues it presented in other area.
Still I would not dismiss it. Yes it is slow. But it is not Java type.
It can be better is the motto.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh wait, I did correctly remember that $20 was JSR in 6502 assembly.
True... and most importantly $A9 = LDA.
Also my assembler wasn't working, so I had to enter that directly in the TL866 ROM programmer's hex editor & didn't remember any other opcodes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. My #1 annoyance these days, because it is so egregious, is Electron apps. I guess because the only language some programmers know is Javascript, of which I know little but what little I know places it marginally above PHP in intrinsic horror. So people write standalone apps in a language intended for tweaking web pages, meaning that to deploy those apps requires embedding an entire web browser into every app.…
Actually javascript even though weird it is one of total different beast as a computing language. It is readable unlike php, dynamic as root from lisp, wide use and hence accessible. But given its original history and neglect, it takes decade to fix all issues it presented in other area. Still I would not dismiss it. Yes it is slow. But it is not Java type. It can be better is the motto.
That is a good thing, yes.
But TBH I wish Eich had just embedded Lisp in Mozilla instead.
> wide use and hence accessible.
"Everyone uses it" is not a good argument for anything at all, really.
> it takes decade to fix all issues it presented in other area.
Well, yes, it has had a lot of R&D done upon it to make it quicker, but again, that is not an endorsement.
> Still I would not dismiss it. Yes it is slow.
It seems to me that in the 2nd sentence there you contradict your own previous sentence.
> But it is not Java type.
What is so wrong with Java?
More OSes support JVMs than support Javascript. JVMs have few requirements and can even run on DOS. JVMs too have a ton of R&D into making them faster and better. There is rich tooling and support to make Java apps scale, such as Enterprise Service Buses, e.g. JBoss FUSE, which allows apps with clashing namespaces to run on the same host at the same time, and even communicate.
There are tools for writing native UIs for Java apps.
I would rather have Java apps than a Javascript one, frankly. At least with Java apps, one JVM in your OS supports all your apps, whereas JS needs one per app, or even one per window or tab in some apps.
> It can be better is the motto.
That is not a good motto. That is in fact a really bad one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually javascript even though weird it is one of total different beast as a computing language. It is readable unlike php, dynamic as root from lisp, wide use and hence accessible. But given its original history and neglect, it takes decade to fix all issues it presented in other area. Still I would not dismiss it. Yes it is slow. But it is not Java type. It can be better is the motto.
> dynamic as root from lisp That is a good thing, yes. But TBH I wish Eich had just embedded Lisp in Mozilla instead. > wide use and hence accessible. "Everyone uses it" is not a good argument for anything at all, really. > it takes decade to fix all issues it presented in other area. Well, yes, it has had a lot of R&D done upon it to make it quicker, but again, that is not an endorsement. > Still I would not dismiss…
This page [0] includes an analysis of the manual for the possible machine Mel programmed in the story along with a probable photograph of him. [1] is an instruction manual for the blackjack program itself, written by Mel. Classic story solidly in the “should be reposted every six months or so” cohort. 0: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/macho-programmers-drum-mem... 1: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/royalPre…
> I did eventually manage to get in contact with Mel, but I scared him away, unfortunately. That's a story for another day... :-/ I'm... very curious what this entailed