Distributed RVS, Darcs, tech love

[Byung-Hee HWANG]

On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 12:19 -0400, Lew wrote:
[something attackish]

Well, you are making a personal attack, it's dangerous. I wish to see
only discussions about TeX ;;

On a python group?

Also: Lew won't see your post, he's on c.l.java.*

oh my god..;;

 

[Marc Espie]

Exactly and Knuths only contribution to software development was the
theory of
"literate" programming. As i said for me algorithms are not software
development,
this is programming in the small (something left for coding apes), not
programming
in the large. There are no problems anymore with programming the
small, sure you
can try to develop Judy Arrays or another more optimized sorting
algorithm, but
this has no real world effect. It is theoretical computer science -
well a few
people seem to like this.

Boy, you really have to get a clue.

Apart from the fact that Knuth wrote a book series that is still THE
definitive series on computer algorithms (and that most people who need
these algorithms know those books... they document a fairly large set of
interesting facts about floating point arithmetic, and the designers of
cpu would do well to read them and not cut to many corners for IEEE754.
They also a document a large set of useful algorithms, some of them
fairly commonplace as soon as you need some efficiency), no, he hasn't
done anything smart.

No real world effect ? Ah! have a look inside your computer at some point.
You'll be surprised where you find those algorithms (your kernel is likely
to use some of them, for instance). And perl is probably better for
Knuth's study of hash algorithms...

As far as TeX being `dead' goes, it's just finished, from Knuth's point of
view. It doesn't prevent TeX-based distributions from thriving (TeXlive
being the latest fad), and TeX-derived projects from going forward...

 

[Peter J. Bismuti]

Be nice.

 

[Piet van Oostrum]

L> Evidence is that TeX development is dead. There is not yet firm evidence
L> that Tex is a "dead end" (or even what that means), and there has been none
L> (nor, I expect, is there any) that any of that reflects on Knuth's skill as
L> a programmer.

According to Knuth's definition the name 'TeX' is reserved for a program
that passes the trip test. Under this assumption TeX is dead by definition.
However in a broader sense TeX is still actively developed, but it may not
be called just 'TeX' because these new versions contain extensions. So
they get new names with 'tex' being part of their name. PdfTeX and LuaTeX
are new versions that are being developed right now.

 

[Joachim Durchholz]

Apart from the fact that Knuth wrote a book series that is still THE
definitive series on computer algorithms

I don't wish to diminish Knuth's work, but it's definitely not timeless.

For an alternative, see Sedgewick's "Algorithms in C/Pascal/whatever".
Not as rigorous about proving the properties of algorithms, but the
selection of algorithms is more modern, and the presentation is
palatable (instead of the assembly/flowchart mix that Knuth is so fond of).
There are other algorithm collections.
The largest one is the Internet itself. A search engine or Wikipedia
would be my first stop when looking for an algorithm.

(Agreeing with the rest.)

Regards,
Jo

 

[toby]

...
Who the **** is this [KOOK], who proclaims that he's
no [EXPERT ON FOO], then proceed to tell us he dosen't fucking care
about [FOO]? Then, he went on about HIS personal fucking zeal for
[BAR], in particular injecting the highly quacky [STUFF]
with impunity.

Sounds like your run-of-the-mill Usenet kook. Feeling the strain of
competition?