Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.programming > #10165

Re: Is MIX utterly silly?

Show all headers | View raw

On 21/08/2019 17:10, Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> On 21.08.2019 14:08, David Brown wrote:
>> On 21/08/2019 07:35, Alf P. Steinbach wrote:

>>> It was a child of its time.
>>>
>>
>> It shouldn't have been.  Knuth was better than that.
>>
>>> One nice thing was that it worked with both decimal and binary. Another
>>> that it didn't directly support any particular calling convention.
>>
>> None of that kind of detail should have been relevant.  The abstraction
>> level is all wrong for a book covering algorithms.
> 
> Today.
> 
> At the time, pre 1970, there weren't that many higher level languages to
> choose from. He /could/ have tried Simula, but it was another luminary,
> Alan Kay, that got into that. I think at the time Algol still had all
> sorts of deficiencies including "call by name", where due to a simple
> editing error in the spec the compiler had to implement thunks passed
> down to the routine so it could evaluate an argument expression as if in
> the caller's stack frame... To complicated for TAOCPP. I think.
> 
> :)

There was no need to use an existing language - or even a complete or
real language, or even one that could be implemented practically.  It is
up to the book's reader to translate the algorithm into whatever
language they need at the time.  The programs in the book are for
demonstration and teaching purposes.

>>>
>>> The world evolves, and so do we, but sloooowly.
>>>
>>
>> True.  And contrary to common misconceptions, evolution does not
>> necessarily mean positive progress!
> 
> Consider, in 1970 it was just 14 years since 1956, when segregation on
> buses was outlawed in the United States, and Norway finally admitted
> Jesuits to the country.
> 
> In the 1990s someplace the last canton in Switzerland allowed women to
> vote.
> 
> This was all amazing progress in the timeframe of TAOCPP: treating
> blacks like people, then treating even women like people.
> 
> Today we think of the US war on women, where e.g. roughly 7 women
> needlessly die per day in Kenya because the US refuses to fund help
> organizations that fight HIV if they also provide sex and abortion
> information to women, as barbaric -- and that's real progress, that we
> now value lives and life more than the old religious based morals.
> 

Unfortunately, whenever an issue involves politics, religion or culture
(and this one involves all of them), there is never a consensus on what
"we think".  The reason the US still refuses to support organisations
that mention the word "abortion" or suggest anything other than
abstinence for family planning, is because /they/ think differently.
(By "they", I mean "the powers that be" in the USA, rather than any
individual American.)

Do we really want this thread to be about politics, nations, religion,
or the like?

> Also, in the last few years I've become a better hobby guitarist and a
> better hobby photographer, still so-so as a hobby programmer, but. ;-)
> 
> 
> Cheers!,
> 
> - Alf

Back to comp.programming | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Is MIX utterly silly? Peter Percival <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2019-08-19 22:52 +0100
  Re: Is MIX utterly silly? Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2019-08-19 21:14 -0500
    Re: Is MIX utterly silly? Peter Percival <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2019-08-20 13:15 +0100
      Re: Is MIX utterly silly? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2019-08-20 14:49 +0200
        Re: Is MIX utterly silly? "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach+usenet@gmail.com> - 2019-08-21 07:35 +0200
          Re: Is MIX utterly silly? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2019-08-21 14:08 +0200
            Re: Is MIX utterly silly? "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach+usenet@gmail.com> - 2019-08-21 17:10 +0200
              Re: Is MIX utterly silly? David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2019-08-22 15:11 +0200
          Re: Is MIX utterly silly? Louis Valence <lvalence@example.com> - 2019-08-23 17:13 -0300
            Re: Is MIX utterly silly? Peter Percival <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2019-08-24 20:53 +0100
              Re: Is MIX utterly silly? luser droog <mijoryx@yahoo.com> - 2019-09-08 12:50 -0700
      Re: Is MIX utterly silly? Louis Valence <lvalence@example.com> - 2019-08-23 17:01 -0300

csiph-web