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Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator?

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Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> writes:

> On 8/3/2026 1:13 PM, Richard Smith wrote:
>> Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> writes:
>> 
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> The very last actual computer program I ever wrote was a Quick Basic
>>> (4.5) executable running under PCDOS 7.0.  Due to a partial Y2K bug
>>> and dead cmos battery I called it in my autoexec to bring up a menu to
>>> set time and date upon boot up.  I used that computer until the end of
>>> 2016 for remote programming some older lines of alarm panels.  In 2017
>>> I gave it to the company that purchased my alarm accounts.
>> Digression, but - I used Quick Basic for my first attempts at
>> programming back in 1996 - so 30 years ago.
>> I could have used the "built-in" BASIC within "MSWindows" then for what
>> I was doing, but well - whatever.
>> I got a first result showing my algorithm did work as a computational
>> solution.
>> I realised things got really serious if you were to make the solution
>> 3-Dimensional - one "serious" being that a 3-Dimensional takes the cube
>> of the amount of memory for my first 1-Dimensional solution (there were
>> almost no 3-Dimensional solutions around then 30 years ago (?)).
>> I was pitched into supercomputing at that juncture.
>> My world became "unix" ("Linux"), programmed in "C".
>> Within a very few months the academics in the Department of Mathematics
>> and Computer Science where talking with some amazement at each other as
>> they absorbed what I had discovered or deduced myself - which they
>> considered what only an expert could comprehend.
>> Another "conversation" was a young lady who was a post-doctoral
>> researcher, who paused for a long time after looking through my code -
>> then picked-up on the "pointers" I had used - per possibilities I had
>> read-of in the couple of books I had on programming in "C" (including
>> Kernighan and Ritchie's "the" book).  Where it turns out I had done about
>> the same as a trainee pilot who had learned about the necessity of
>> flying low, and the necessity of flying fast, and had just returned from
>> a first solo training flight in less than half the time it was supposed to take,
>> with a thin haze of smoke coming off the aircraft and leaves and twigs
>> jammed in bits of the aeroplane, where they were deducing that the pupil
>> on an early solo flight had just flown at Mach 2 at treetop height (which
>> would if so leave them handling "PR" issues like windows broken by the
>> supersonic boom at just over head height, cows needing psychotherapy,
>> etc.).
>> Happy days... :-)
>
> I used Quick basic a little earlier than that.  I was struggling with
> Algebra with irrational solutions in college, so I wrote some program
> to calculate graphs and data points to help me get close.  It was so
> fast I had to add a time delay for visual affect before I showed it to
> my Algebra professor.  Brilliant guy.  From that he learned QB and
> started using it for generating fern graphics.  (a fractal set)  I
> showed him how much faster C+ was and he rewrote it in C+ and started
> writing his own graphic libraries to go with it, because he didn't get
> all the libraries with his copy of C+.  I never really figured out how
> to write the answer as a complete expression, but I learned how to
> calculate it close enough to a gazillion decimal places.
>
> A little after (or maybe it was before, well around that time) my
> Geology professor was showing off his basic interpretor executing a
> groundwater saturation study he was working on and proud of how much
> faster the new 386 he had for his department was executing the program
> than the older XTs or even the 286.  He was really proud of the fact
> that it only took a few days to run.  I showed him how to use an
> editor to semi automatically convert it into Quick basic compatible
> code and compile.  The next model ran in a couple hours.
>
> One of my part time jobs back then was working as a lab tech in the
> computer lab.  Mostly just supervising, but I did spend a fair amount
> of time teaching other people how to code or how to be power users.

Speed of computation - he went from interpreted BASIC to compiled
binaries from "QuickBASIC"?

They warn these days that an interpreter running the sparse "script" can
often far better use the computer's hardware that a "clunky" compiled
program in eg. "C".

There is thought that programs like "C" now only belong down in the
operating system or when writing the core of interpreters?
Linus Torvalds of the Linux project says that to this day he delights in
"polishing" code to get optimised fastest run-times for core components
of the operating system.

This nearly three decades ago I realised anything done once like the
"set-up" where the program "comes-alive" - "just" make the program
obvious to follow and forget about run-speed because you do it once.
But when you get into the "working tips" of the program where pieces of
resultant code will be used million(s) of times a second - do optimise
the code for run-speed.  In those parts of the code I made code with no
branching decisions, etc., and made separate "nuggets" of code which
were mostly identical but hard-encoded different circumstances.
[in my code it was different geometric positions / situations]
The compiler's "optimiser" broke at far below the final size of the
program, so I was very glad I wrote it to be "fast as written" - as I
had to set the compiler's optimiser option to zero - don't try to
optimise at all - write binary code exactly as expressed in the program.
That was one of the "amazement" things - that I had come to this level
of perception.

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off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-07-30 13:11 +0100
  Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> - 2026-07-30 10:25 -0400
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-30 14:37 -0400
      Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Carl <carl.ijamesXX@YYverizon.net> - 2026-07-30 16:17 -0400
        Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-07-30 21:33 +0100
          Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-30 19:12 -0400
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-30 15:22 -0400
  Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? bp@www.zefox.net - 2026-07-30 15:45 +0000
  Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-30 13:56 -0400
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-07-30 21:49 +0100
      Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-31 08:23 -0400
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-30 22:47 -0400
  Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-07-31 11:27 -0700
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-31 16:00 -0400
      Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-07-31 16:30 -0700
        Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Clare Snyder <clare@snyder.on.ca> - 2026-07-31 22:23 -0400
        Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-07-31 22:46 -0400
          Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-01 09:14 -0400
          Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-01 11:18 -0700
            Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-01 16:07 -0400
            Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-02 21:45 -0400
            Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-08-03 21:13 +0100
              Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-03 14:03 -0700
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-08-04 13:10 +0100
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-04 10:04 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-04 13:08 -0700
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-04 18:24 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-04 15:47 -0700
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-04 16:16 -0700
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Bob La Londe <none@none.com99> - 2026-08-04 16:30 -0700
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? David Billington <djb@invalid.com> - 2026-08-05 00:35 +0100
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-04 23:02 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-08-05 09:13 +0100
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-05 09:32 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-05 10:06 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-05 21:33 -0400
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-08-06 05:34 +0100
                Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-06 09:39 -0400
              Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-03 18:23 -0400
    Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? Richard Smith <null@void.com> - 2026-08-03 19:47 +0100
      Re: off-grid - battery & winter 12V-generator? "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> - 2026-08-03 16:10 -0400

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