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My teen years: The transputer operating system

nanochess.org

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Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#61

Post by cjohnson318 »

kragen wrote: post #45
cjohnson318 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native English speaker and the article reads very naturally. I've been learning Spanish over the last two plus years, and I'm jealous of how regular and consistent Spanish is compared to English.

The orthography, maybe? And there are no phrasal verbs, which is nice. But you have gender, you have plenty of irregular verbs, you have a significantly more complex inflection system even for regular verbs (including the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense in the indicative), and its allophonic phonotactics are tricky (though English has a fair bit of mess here too). Zapotec sounds like it would be a lot more…

One more point: my kid is learning to read, and explaining words like "read", "read", "red", "lead", "lead", "led", "cough", "bough", "bow", "bow", "cow", "tow", "toe", etc., gets very old very quickly.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#62

Post by nanochess »

zamadatix wrote: post #57

If the author is still reading: did you enjoy programming for "oddball" systems for the time (like the transputer) more than x86 or would you say the fun comes more from enforcing strict limitations (like fitting in a boot sector) more than system uniqueness?

I didn't know it was "oddball". I had brochures, official Inmos datasheets, and reference books about it, along magazines articles citing it as the "faster processor in the world". I believed it was pretty popular until Internet put me down in Earth, and I discovered the transputer was pretty much dead since 1994.

I was already proficient in Z80 and 16-bit x86, so learning another instruction set was pretty welcome. The fun came from developing things for the first time and discovering how to actually do things, a 32-bit operating system, a K&R C compiler, and the assorted utilities.

Enforcing limitations was inspired by the IOCCC, and later by my boot sector programs. The type of things you do after work, just to test yourself and have some fun.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#63

Post by nanochess »

ForOldHack wrote: post #18
nanochess wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Thank you!

Thank you. A ton of work was done, in typing and debugging as well as creating. While some of us were cutting out teeth on nix clones... You made an OS. This is amazing* worthy of praise from Michael Swaine.

Thanks! I love the "Fire in the Valley" book of Michael Swaine. I've read it so many times and always find it very inspiring.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#64

Post by nanochess »

leptons wrote: post #46

This is amazing. Nice job, I'm going to have to check this out sometime. Back around 1985 I was 15 years old and very interested in transputer processors, so much that I called up SGS Thompson, as I wanted to get the datasheets for the chip. The guy at the company was so surprised to be getting a call from a 15 year old. He didn't send me the technical info I was seeking but he did send me some brochures. That's as c…

These brochures were amazing. Just like video games, the cover promised a lot!

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#65

Post by kragen »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #59
kragen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The orthography, maybe? And there are no phrasal verbs, which is nice. But you have gender, you have plenty of irregular verbs, you have a significantly more complex inflection system even for regular verbs (including the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense in the indicative), and its allophonic phonotactics are tricky (though English has a fair bit of mess here too). Zapotec sounds like it would be a lot more…

I don't know as much about language as you do, but hear me out. You can pretty much sound everything out. The irregular verbs aren't that bad; they're limited to THE highest frequency verbs that you'd expect, e.g., be, go, have, see, say, do, give, etc., and they're all irregular in fairly unsurprising ways, except for caber and andar. After about 20 irregular preterite verbs, there's three irregular imperfect verbs,…

"You can pretty much sound everything out" is simply what I was saying about the orthography. It's partly a result of Spanish's phonological conservatism but mostly a result of the orthographic reforms by the RAE in 01726, 01754, 01815, and 01832. But that isn't even a part of the spoken language at all; it's just a property of the writing system. English written in IPA or Shavian (or my own doomed eccentric proposal, http://canonical.org/~kragen/alphanumerenglish) would be equally easy to sound out, but it would still be English. If you were talking out loud to someone who had hypothetically learned English after such a spelling reform, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

As for irregular verbs, there are quite a lot more than 20; https://howismyspanish.com/all-irregular-spanish-verbs/ lists over 270 irregular verbs in Spanish, but it also says that's "over ⅓ of all Spanish verbs", so it may not be the most reliable source. There's a lot more than five irregular subjunctive verbs, and they aren't all very common verbs; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_irregular_verbs#Presen... mentions "moler", for example. Other uncommon irregular verbs mentioned in page include "maullar", "erguir", and "embestir". https://web.archive.org/web/20200807095413/https://socratic.... says that the Manual de la Conjugación del Verbo lists 12'290 different Spanish verbs with 63 different models of irregular conjugations; the number of verbs following one of those models must be in the thousands.

By comparison, English has under 200 irregular verbs, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#66

Post by kragen »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #61
kragen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The orthography, maybe? And there are no phrasal verbs, which is nice. But you have gender, you have plenty of irregular verbs, you have a significantly more complex inflection system even for regular verbs (including the subjunctive mood and the conditional tense in the indicative), and its allophonic phonotactics are tricky (though English has a fair bit of mess here too). Zapotec sounds like it would be a lot more…

One more point: my kid is learning to read, and explaining words like "read", "read", "red", "lead", "lead", "led", "cough", "bough", "bow", "bow", "cow", "tow", "toe", etc., gets very old very quickly.

You may be interested in the history of failed orthographic reforms in English; the Simplified Spelling Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board had significant popular support, especially among socialists and progressives, but ultimately failed, the only remnant being the "NO THRU TRAFFIC" signs seen in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English-language_spel... lists a couple of dozen people historically prominent. But nobody in English has ever had the level of political power that the RAE had in even 01815, much less 01726, so it's never happened.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#68

Post by cjohnson318 »

kragen wrote: post #65
cjohnson318 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know as much about language as you do, but hear me out. You can pretty much sound everything out. The irregular verbs aren't that bad; they're limited to THE highest frequency verbs that you'd expect, e.g., be, go, have, see, say, do, give, etc., and they're all irregular in fairly unsurprising ways, except for caber and andar. After about 20 irregular preterite verbs, there's three irregular imperfect verbs,…

"You can pretty much sound everything out" is simply what I was saying about the orthography. It's partly a result of Spanish's phonological conservatism but mostly a result of the orthographic reforms by the RAE in 01726, 01754, 01815, and 01832. But that isn't even a part of the spoken language at all; it's just a property of the writing system. English written in IPA or Shavian (or my own doomed eccentric proposal…

I've learned a lot. I wasn't aware of the RAE's efforts to tamp down and standardize spelling in Spanish. I think your alphanumerenglish is pretty cool.

I really thought there were only 5 irregular subjunctive verbs: dar, ir, ser, haber, estar, & saber. I've read a couple of novels in Spanish, and it just seems more regular. I guess that's just my opinion. Thanks for teaching me a few new things.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#69

Post by cjohnson318 »

kragen wrote: post #66
cjohnson318 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more point: my kid is learning to read, and explaining words like "read", "read", "red", "lead", "lead", "led", "cough", "bough", "bow", "bow", "cow", "tow", "toe", etc., gets very old very quickly.

You may be interested in the history of failed orthographic reforms in English; the Simplified Spelling Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board had significant popular support, especially among socialists and progressives, but ultimately failed, the only remnant being the "NO THRU TRAFFIC" signs seen in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English-language_spel... lists a couple of doz…

NO THRU TRAFFIC has always stood out to me. I hadn't heard of the Simplified Spelling Board, but I'm interested in minimal subsets of languages, like Ogden's Basic English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English. I use a variation of this as a model when starting a new language, and it's been pretty fun and effective.

Re: My teen years: The transputer operating system

#70

Post by kragen »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #68
kragen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can pretty much sound everything out" is simply what I was saying about the orthography. It's partly a result of Spanish's phonological conservatism but mostly a result of the orthographic reforms by the RAE in 01726, 01754, 01815, and 01832. But that isn't even a part of the spoken language at all; it's just a property of the writing system. English written in IPA or Shavian (or my own doomed eccentric proposal…

I've learned a lot. I wasn't aware of the RAE's efforts to tamp down and standardize spelling in Spanish. I think your alphanumerenglish is pretty cool. I really thought there were only 5 irregular subjunctive verbs: dar, ir, ser, haber, estar, & saber. I've read a couple of novels in Spanish, and it just seems more regular. I guess that's just my opinion. Thanks for teaching me a few new things.

Aim h4pi te bi ev serv1s!
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