Python programming

[Neil Cerutti]

OK - it's degenerated into one of these threads - I'm going to
participate.

Me, too!

I wrote lots of programs, strictly for fun, on every personal
computer I got my hands on. Toward the end of the 80's personal
computer's stopped coming equipped with programming environments,
and I stopped programming.

I eventually learned some computing theory in college where they
taught C and the rudiments of C++.

Thanks to the open-source movement we've returned to the days
when anybody can program for zero cash. You can program well
enough to amuse yourself with very little effort indeed.

To get from there to being able to write programs to do useful
things for yourself is a lot harder, but this is the niche that
Python fills excellent well. If this is what you want to do,
Python is a good way to go.

That's still just the beginning, but it's a pretty good place.

 

[ngangsia akumbo]

wow wow

Thanks for the contutions

Thanks guys,
many more are welcome

 

[Albert van der Horst]

Never did S-100, but I did do a custom Unibus card (wirewrap).

You know you're working with a Real Computer (tm) when the +5V power
supply can deliver as much current as an arc welder.

I've a 64 node Parsytec transputer system in the hall way with
dual 5V 100A power supplies. Does that count?

Groetjes Albert

 

[88888 Dihedral]

Me, too!



I wrote lots of programs, strictly for fun, on every personal

computer I got my hands on. Toward the end of the 80's personal

computer's stopped coming equipped with programming environments,

and I stopped programming.



I eventually learned some computing theory in college where they

taught C and the rudiments of C++.



Thanks to the open-source movement we've returned to the days

when anybody can program for zero cash. You can program well

enough to amuse yourself with very little effort indeed.



To get from there to being able to write programs to do useful

things for yourself is a lot harder, but this is the niche that

Python fills excellent well. If this is what you want to do,

Python is a good way to go.



That's still just the beginning, but it's a pretty good place.

I wrote programs for viewing gif, pcx,
bmp, and jpg images in 1991 to 1992.

Also I was planning to write an
Lotus123 clone at the time, but
I was too lazy to chunk out that
project in 1993.

 

[Beowulf]

Once you master one language it is easy to understand other. I mastered C in my younger years, writing signal handlers and thread on Solaris and AIX.

It it not the syntax, that comes easy, it is building the correct algorithm that matters.

The best way to learn is make some thing useful that you need. I would suggest project with Raspberry Pi to learn python.

 

[Roy Smith]

Once you master one language, the next one is hard. After that, they
get easier.

And then you get to PHP.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

Once you master one language it is easy to understand other.

Depends on the languages. Learning Forth doesn't make it easier to learn
Perl. Learning Pascal doesn't make Smalltalk easier.

 

[Tim Chase]

Depends on the languages. Learning Forth doesn't make it easier to
learn Perl. Learning Pascal doesn't make Smalltalk easier.

And despite having a couple dozen languages worth of (varying levels
of) experience under my belt, Prolog still feels to me like
programming by epiphany.

-tkc

 

[Grant Edwards]

And then you get to PHP.

Yep, it's a real mess. Both the language and the room you're in when
your head finally explodes.

 

[Grant Edwards]

And despite having a couple dozen languages worth of (varying levels
of) experience under my belt, Prolog still feels to me like
programming by epiphany.

Back when I was in school, Lisp and Prolog were the hardest to grok. I
eventually "got" Lisp (well, I actually "got" Scheme, and I think I
could now "get" Lisp if I tried). Prolog is definitely the odd one of
the dozen or two languages I've learned -- and I even wrote a small
expert system in Prolog as a project for a software engineering class.

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

I've a 64 node Parsytec transputer system in the hall way with
dual 5V 100A power supplies. Does that count?

I spotted a device on the table of the company calibration office...

As I recall, it was a 100A capable resistor... 0.10 OHM.

No idea what it was meant for; big binding posts at one end, and a slab
of sheet steel in a "W" shape (smooth curves, not sharp bends).

 

[Roy Smith]

I spotted a device on the table of the company calibration office...

As I recall, it was a 100A capable resistor... 0.10 OHM.

No idea what it was meant for; big binding posts at one end, and a slab
of sheet steel in a "W" shape (smooth curves, not sharp bends).

External shunt for an ammeter?

 

[Grant Edwards]

More likely a dummy load for power supply testing.

Could be. Back when I was working on PWM controllers for golf cart
and small car motors, we used to use steel coathangers for test loads,
but once they got past orange and more towards yellow, they started to
get too soft. An appropriately dimensioned chunk of sheet steel would
have been ideal.

(Normally, ammeter shunts are sized to dissipate as little power as
possible.)

I've used chunks of coathanger for that too, but I don't think the
resistance was stable enough over temperature to trust the results at
higher currents.

 

[Gene Heskett]

Could be. Back when I was working on PWM controllers for golf cart
and small car motors, we used to use steel coathangers for test loads,
but once they got past orange and more towards yellow, they started to
get too soft. An appropriately dimensioned chunk of sheet steel would
have been ideal.


I've used chunks of coathanger for that too, but I don't think the
resistance was stable enough over temperature to trust the results at
higher currents.

This is really really offtopic but since its turned into war stories,
I recall one time that I needed to test a 5v 200amp supply that there were
2 of in an old NEC Digital Video Effects unit, I looked up the R per 1000'
of standard romex in the various gauges & went over the Lowes and bought a
100' roll of of 10/2. Soldered the inside end together after striping and
twisting it together, It worked well, but the PSU didn't. Made by HP back
when they _thought_ they knew about how to build cement block sized power
supplies. The psu went into foldback at about 20 amps. All the bugs were
good, nothing running warm. Analyzing backwards in view of the curie point
on some ferrite's being below the boiling point of water, I finally came to
the conclusion that the ferrite in the output transformer had gone
austenitic, eg totally non-magnetic, like it was just so much air, which is
what many of those compounds will do if magnetized near saturation when
they hit the curie point, and will never recover from. HP of course didn't
have the transformer or a replacement supply, but I found some Pioneer's
with a suitable rating at M.P.Jones in FL and broke their hands putting a
check for 2 of them in them, shipped yesterday. That was in about 1997 &
they were still in service when we turned analog tv off June 30, 2008.

Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

NOTICE: Will pay 100 USD for an HP-4815A defective but
complete probe assembly.

 

[John Ladasky]

I do remember it.

http://www.webcitation.org/659yh1oSh

As do I, though I couldn't have been more than about 16 years old when it came out. I just re-read it, and this comment jumped out at me:

"Neither OS/370 nor FORTRAN show any signs of dying out, despite all the efforts of Pascal programmers the world over."

Well, OS/370, RIP.

As for FORTRAN? This week, I actually downloaded an application which required a FORTRAN compiler. This is the only FORTRAN application I've ever needed. It's not old code, the first revision came out about 10 years ago. More than once, I have queried Google with the phrase "Why isn't FORTRAN dead yet?" For some reason, it lives on. I can't say that I understand why.

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

As for FORTRAN? This week, I actually downloaded an application which required a FORTRAN compiler. This is the only FORTRAN application I've ever needed. It's not old code, the first revision came out about 10 years ago. More than once, I have queried Google with the phrase "Why isn't FORTRAN dead yet?" For some reason, it lives on. I can't say that I understand why.

Well, for one thing, no one can justify rewriting all the numerics
libraries... LAPACK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPACK , NEC-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Electromagnetics_Code (and likely
NEC-4).

"If it works, don't fix it"

 

[John Ladasky]

Well, for one thing, no one can justify rewriting all the numerics
libraries... LAPACK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPACK , NEC-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Electromagnetics_Code (and likely
NEC-4).

I have used Numpy for years, and I'm pretty sure that Numpy calls LAPACK under the hood. But if that is true, then I get LAPACK as a pre-compiled binary. I didn't need a FORTRAN compiler until last week.

If one or two specialized applications are the only reason we are keeping a 50 year-old programming language around, I would be tempted to rewrite those applications -- in C, at least. C's not dead yet! (It's just resting!)