<div dir="auto">My "favorite" story about memory utilization was when we had just announced the DEC Alpha with its 64-bit address space and someone (who should have known better) sneered that they would look forward to 128 bit addresses.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I asked them "What problem do you need that much address space to solve? What is the practical need?"</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The look on their face was priceless.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, May 17, 2024, 05:30 Scott McBrien via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr">Jim, you’d choose FORTRAN over C for something that needs speed?</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Though really, we have an embarrassment of computing riches these days compared with the past, and our programming languages and habits show it. (I’m looking at you Java) :</div><div dir="ltr">Sure just keep all that in memory, it’s cool. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">No, no, don’t worry about freeing memory back to the system, we’ll “trash collect” it at some point in the future. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Typing? Nah, we don’t need to worry about allocating memory for data structures based on their type so we make more economical decisions for memory, that’s rubbish! We’ll just allocate an entire page anytime you need anything, and behind the scenes we’ll just keep allocating as you need, slapping it all together with the MMU on your behalf!</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Recently someone was expressing excitement for 64k page size kernels and I asked, “Does your application store enough to need 64k pages?” They looked confused and asked what I meant. After some level setting of how Linux allocated memory, they said they didn’t know because they’d never had to think about it, just assumed more == better. After looking at their application memory use, guess what? It wasn’t going to help them…</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">-Scott</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On May 16, 2024, at 9:36 PM, Jim Kinney via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="auto">Compiled code. Still do FORTRAN when it has to be fast. Still do C if I need to burn up a monitor (oops!). But you can't learn it if you can't see it, touch it, and change it. The scripting languages are easier to learn and definitely have a place. And they are now the gateway to programming. They're not perfect and they slurp down hardware. I can't imagine python trying to run in the days of BASIC on an early pc jr. :-)</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 16, 2024, 8:33 PM jon.maddog.hall--- via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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<span style="font-family:helvetica;font-size:12pt">Chuck,<br><br>Many people did not recognize the benefit of pulling down the source code and typing it in by hand.<br><br>"Wow! What does that error mean? I typed it in just like....oh...I made a mistake!"<br><br>You had a syntax error, and BASIC showed it right away (most of the time anyway).<br><br>But maybe your syntax was correct and your program still did not work. Maybe the error was that you meant to type "2" and you typed "3' by mistake....a "run-time error".<br><br></span>You do not get to create or fix these problems if all you do is pull binaries off the web or load them from a CDROM.
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<br>This was EXACTLY why the professors at Cambridge University started the Raspberry Pi project. They realized that the freshmen of today often knew less about computers than the freshmen of 20 years ago...the ones who 20 years ago downloaded source code and (in some cases) even had to COMPILE it and LINK it in order to run it.
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<br>Happy Birthday, BASIC!
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<br>md
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On 05/08/2024 8:10 AM EDT Chuck Payne via Ale <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">ale@ale.org</a>> wrote:
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I am surprised that this one didn't get an email. Happy Birthday BASIC, it turned 60. It only three years older than me, and has more functions than me too.
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<a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/software/programming/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60-dartmouth-basic-started-it-all-in-1964" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tomshardware.com/software/programming/the-basic-programming-language-turns-60-dartmouth-basic-started-it-all-in-1964</a>
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As a kid, I got into BASIC because it was the way to get games. I forgot the name of the magazine, but I would buy it every month and sit at my VIC 20, trying the code in, playing such games and Oil, where you drill to get oil hoping to hit a pocket with a devil in it. Or trying to understand what the data fields were doing.
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Since I missed the 4th as well, here some BASIC Code for you guys
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<a href="https://www.goto10retro.com/p/star-wars-theme-in-basic" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.goto10retro.com/p/star-wars-theme-in-basic</a>
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<br>Yes, I was one of those kids that would type some weird messages on the computers tha would repeat, like
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<br>10 print "Long live ALE, bring more beer"
<br>20 goto 10
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<br>Happy Computing guys
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</div> <span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span>
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Terror PUP a.k.a
<br>Chuck "PUP" Payne
<br>-----------------------------------------
<br>Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux.
<br>-----------------------------------------
<br>openSUSE -- Terrorpup
<br>openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member
<br>skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup
<br>freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein
<br>Register Linux Userid: 155363
<br>
<br>openSUSE Community Member since 2008.
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