Larry Wall & Cults

M

Mac

Larry Wall and Cults
(Lazyness, Impatience and Hubris)
200012

Dear readers,

[snip]

Surely you have heard of Adolf Hitler
and his atrocities of genocide? I must alert you, that a single person
couldn't commit such a crime.

Wow, Godwin's law invoked on the first post of the thread.

--Mac
 
R

Rob Warnock

+---------------
| (e-mail address removed) (John Doherty) wrote:
| >AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?
|
| Eight. Now talk about indenting skip returns...that one
| required blood transfusions. [emoticon looks at list of n.g.]
| I guess not many will understand.
+---------------

You might be surprised, Barb. Quite a few of the comp.lang.lisp crew
are former PDP-10 geeks. ;-}

And just to be sure *I'm* understanding what you're talking about, ;-}
did you mean the convention of the second line of the following snippet?

foo: pushj p,ckperm
pjrst badprm ; user lacks privs, complain & return.
movei t0,cmdblk ; o.k. to proceed.
...

Indenting the non-skip return for a subroutine call was always pretty
clear to me. Where things got really muddled (and contentious!) was
when you had long skip chains of T{R,L}{Z,O,C,~}{N,E} instructions
in which whether a particular instruction was in the skipped-to or
non-skipped position depended dynamically on the flow of control
above it. [HAKMEM was chock-full of that kind of "efficient" code.]
In that case, it seemed more readable to simply not indent anything in
the skip chain, and put a scary comment warning about the tricky code.


-Rob
 
J

jmfbahciv

+---------------
| (e-mail address removed) (John Doherty) wrote:
| >AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?
|
| Eight. Now talk about indenting skip returns...that one
| required blood transfusions. [emoticon looks at list of n.g.]
| I guess not many will understand.
+---------------

You might be surprised, Barb. Quite a few of the comp.lang.lisp crew
are former PDP-10 geeks. ;-}

And just to be sure *I'm* understanding what you're talking about, ;-}
did you mean the convention of the second line of the following snippet?

Yep, but you have a bug. The MOVEI [emoticon scrolls down to look]
heh... my reply form is non-porportional and now everything is
wrong. That's why the hard and fast rule of 8 was used in PDP-10
land.
foo: pushj p,ckperm
pjrst badprm ; user lacks privs, complain & return.
movei t0,cmdblk ; o.k. to proceed.
...

Indenting the non-skip return for a subroutine call was always pretty
clear to me.

It was to the -20 types, too. The -10 types maintained that,
if the human code reader didn't know the call had a skip return,
he had no business looking at the code. Having the opcodes all
line up left-justified made reading code quickly possible.
..Where things got really muddled (and contentious!) was
when you had long skip chains of T{R,L}{Z,O,C,~}{N,E} instructions
in which whether a particular instruction was in the skipped-to or
non-skipped position depended dynamically on the flow of control
above it. [HAKMEM was chock-full of that kind of "efficient" code.]
In that case, it seemed more readable to simply not indent anything in
the skip chain, and put a scary comment warning about the tricky code.

If you knew your biz, you didn't need the scary warning. Now
consider a list of PUSHJs where each could have a skip,
double-skip or triple-skip return. Depending on which way
you're flowing through the code, each and every one could be
indented and not-indented.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
 
J

jmfbahciv

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

Eight. Now talk about indenting skip returns...that one
required blood transfusions. [emoticon looks at list of n.g.]
I guess not many will understand.

I understand.
The style I used for PDP-10 macro assembly language was
*) Indent two spaces for error return from subroutine or UUO (or jsys)
*) Indent one space for instructions that skip or may skip.

The other point of contention was what to put between the opcode and
its arguments; space vs tab. I had some TECO macros that would
undo the damage after pristine code had been munged by someone
not conforming to style. :)

<GRIN> And we had some that put them back.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
 
J

Joe Smith

AND HOW MANY SPACES PER TAB STOP?

Eight. Now talk about indenting skip returns...that one
required blood transfusions. [emoticon looks at list of n.g.]
I guess not many will understand.

I understand.
The style I used for PDP-10 macro assembly language was
*) Indent two spaces for error return from subroutine or UUO (or jsys)
*) Indent one space for instructions that skip or may skip.

The other point of contention was what to put between the opcode and
its arguments; space vs tab. I had some TECO macros that would
undo the damage after pristine code had been munged by someone
not conforming to style. :)
-Joe
 
M

Mac

Not quite, no comparison was made; see:
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]


Hmm. No explicit comparison was made, but since the post is a cautionary
tale (well, the post is a rambling mess, but I think it is trying to be a
cautionary tale) I think the comparison is understood.

But if the comparison must be explicit, as you seem to be saying, then I
have to concede the point.

Best regards,
Mac
 
D

David Schwartz

You're both right but ...

Xah Lee: "I'm starting my own cult to exterminate morons on
this earth. Two things are on the top of my agenda: Unixism and Perl."

Pascal Bourguignon: <Xah Lee's website runs on Linux, a Unix-like OS>

Is more like

Joe Blow: I'm going to exterminate all morons who drive a Ford Explorer.

Fred Bloggs: But Joe, you drive a Ford Explorer!

The you're missing is that 'unixism' has nothing to do with *using*
UNIX.
Rather than

Joe Blow: Ford Explorers are a little bit expensive to service and the
doors squeak after a couple of years.

Fred Bloggs: Thanks for the tip Joe, I see you drive one, so you should
know.

The problem with 'unixism' is its affect on UNIX, and it would be
logical that only those people who use UNIXes are affected by 'unixism' and
concerned about it.

DS
 
B

Brian Inglis

Hmm. No explicit comparison was made, but since the post is a cautionary
tale (well, the post is a rambling mess, but I think it is trying to be a
cautionary tale) I think the comparison is understood.

But if the comparison must be explicit, as you seem to be saying, then I
have to concede the point.

Google for the Godwin's Law FAQ on how to troll on Usenet, mention
Nazis, and not be caught by Godwins' Law.
 
M

Michele Dondi

It would, if anyone could take Xah Lee Loo seriously. But really, no one
can. He's more like the court jester, creeping out of the dark every so
and so months. We're all very much enjoying his sporadic shows. Really.

Really!


Michele
 
N

norman werner

Well, let's see how your clear your mind was today.
Either it's a joke, in which case it is clear to all
that it doesn't really mean troll, or it's not a joke
in which case I obviously don't know Esperanto.

I read it as an 'two-in-one'.
A (not funny) joke about the troll and an infantile sideremark about
eo spreading more half-truths.
"universal language" - Whats that? What is a universal language ...
Besides expressing basic wishes for food, attention or love. And
where is/was the relation between the troll and eo?

Here are the facts:

1. It's a joke, as you surmised.

2. I know Esperanto.

i read it _later_ . From youre joke it seemed more like you "heard of
esperanto".


So I hereby withdraw the accusation of stupidity - standing firm only
on the not-funny-front.


Now can you perhaps see that your first comment in the poor
translation of your own Esperanto is invalid and offensive?



Allright - it was not a translation - the error was to call it an
translation. But since only a extremly small minority of readers could
read both - it seemed ok for me to change not the basic-message but
the way to express this message. E.g. I could not see the relevance
for a non-eo-speaker of eo having a x or not. So i changed this in the
"translation".
By the way, to those not fluent in both languages, what this
fellow really wrote was more along the lines of "Please do not
joke about things you don't know about. Xah Lee certainly --
because Esperanto has no "x" -- is not Esperanto. And your
joke is merely stupid."

Yep.
If you're going to accuse me of stupidity, please at least
get your own translation and logic skills in working order
first.

At least i was not the only who misunderstood you.

And please; Since you elaborated on my "translation" - it's ok to
criticize.
But the same does not hold true for my logic-skill-malfunction - so
either do not diagnose it or elaborate more on it.


Norman
 
A

Alan Balmer

I'd expect to get these complaints indeed from people who drove it,
but I'd be puzzled if they'd continued to drive it every day.

Not me. I'd just assume that they couldn't afford to switch vehicles
whenever they had a complaint.
 
A

Antony Sequeira

Andre said:
+---------------
| $ telnet xahlee.org 80;
| Trying 208.186.130.4...
| Connected to xahlee.org.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| GET / HTTP/1.1
|
| HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
| Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
| Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+---------------

So are you complaining about the fact that his hosting provider
preloaded RedHat Fedora with Apache 2.0 for him?


There is no shortage of Windows-based hosting companies, so why
didn't he go there ? Whatever your opinions, it's best to put
your money where your mouth is if you expect to be taken
seriously.
Windows (MS) is not 'Unixism'?
-Antony
 
B

Brian {Hamilton Kelly}

Hmm. No explicit comparison was made, but since the post is a cautionary
tale (well, the post is a rambling mess, but I think it is trying to be a
cautionary tale) I think the comparison is understood.

"Cautionary tale"???? Cautionary tale, my arse.

The post was the fuckwitted ramblings of a total raving looney; kill the
thread (and the original poster) and forget about it.
 
R

Rob Warnock

+---------------
| > Windows (MS) is not 'Unixism'?
|
| It's VMS'ism !
+---------------

Well, originally, certainly, in the core of the kernel.
But there are plenty enough "Unixisms" in the rest of it!
[Go re-read "Worse is Better", then see if you don't agree...]


-Rob
 
A

Andre Majorel

Andre said:
+---------------
| $ telnet xahlee.org 80;
| Trying 208.186.130.4...
| Connected to xahlee.org.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| GET / HTTP/1.1
|
| HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
| Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:35:52 GMT
| Server: Apache/2.0.50 (Fedora)
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+---------------

So are you complaining about the fact that his hosting provider
preloaded RedHat Fedora with Apache 2.0 for him?


There is no shortage of Windows-based hosting companies, so why
didn't he go there ? Whatever your opinions, it's best to put
your money where your mouth is if you expect to be taken
seriously.

Windows (MS) is not 'Unixism'?

If by unixism, you mean any operating system that has a
hierarchical filesystem and byte stream files, yes. But that
would include quite a few other non-Unix operating systems,
including Mac OS 9, Prologue and probably everything else this
side of CP/M (DOS 1.x shall be deemed to be CP/M).
 
B

Brian Inglis

If by unixism, you mean any operating system that has a
hierarchical filesystem and byte stream files, yes. But that
would include quite a few other non-Unix operating systems,
including Mac OS 9, Prologue and probably everything else this
side of CP/M (DOS 1.x shall be deemed to be CP/M).

DOS 2.x+ shall be deemed to be CP/M+!
 

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