General Protection Exception

[Ivar Rosquist]

Ivar Rosquist said:



Oh yes he can - as he just proved.

Pray tell us: What exactly has been proved?

 

[Al Balmer]

Al Balmer said:


They're different states of the same element. Mathematics is frozen
programming. (Or, if you prefer, programming is defrosted mathematics.)

Of course, and both are simply manifestations of the sex drive.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Ivar Rosquist said:

Pray tell us: What exactly has been proved?

He has proved that he can generalise from small samples and anecdotal
evidence. All humans can do this.

 

[Ivar Rosquist]

Ivar Rosquist said:


He has proved that he can generalise from small samples and anecdotal
evidence. All humans can do this.

Oh, I see

 

[Mark McIntyre]

It is prejudice.

Y'know, you guys ought to grow up. I don't see any actual
mathematicians complaining about Nelu implying they're not
programmers.

How many friends do you have that are mathematicians?

Who the hell cares? It was a casual comment, not a bloody indictment
of a class. If you want to start moaning, why not complain about
something sensible, like the overpriced rubbish that Apple sell.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Ivar Rosquist]

Who the hell cares? It was a casual comment, not a bloody indictment
of a class.

The OP has already apologized - no harm done.

If you want to start moaning, why not complain about
something sensible, like the overpriced rubbish that Apple sell.

This is WAY off topic, but kind of amusing. If you think that
Apple sells rubbish (overpriced or not) here is an idea for you to
explore: Don't buy Apple products.

 

[Barry Schwarz]

On 8 Jan 2007 20:11:46 -0800, "(e-mail address removed)" <[email protected]>
wrote:


snip 150 lines

Thanks, Jack. Bear with me as I am relearning a lot of this. I got away
with not having to program for about a year and a half after I got my
degree so I'm probably due.

Your next lesson is to learn to quote only relevant material. You
don't need to quote a whole message just to say thanks.


Remove del for email

 

[David T. Ashley]

I am a mathematician trying to write a program in C to do some curve
fitting. When I get to the point where I attempt to enter data in my
arrays, I get a General Protection Exception error message. What is
this and how can I fix it. I am writing in Turbo C++. My source code is
below.

Just some general advice for you.

The other posters have pointed out the errors.

a)You might want to obtain the classic K&R book by Messrs. Kernighan and
Ritchie.

b)You might want to upgrade to Microsoft Visual C++. I understand it is
about $110 these days (a far cry from when Visual Studio used to be $1,500).
It is more current and has good help, both online and built in.

c)I don't want to discourage you from programming in 'C', but maybe a
scripting language with more "protection" (built into Mathematica?) would
be appropriate. 'C' compiles very efficiently, but you also need to be
careful: pointer errors, array subscripting errors, and mismatched function
arguments are deadly ... these translate into triggering memory protection
faults on the machine, mismatched stack frames, etc.

d)In general in 'C', you want to give the compiler all the information it
needs to check definitions against invocations. This means that you use
header files correctly to do this. (If this doesn't make sense, please
write me at (e-mail address removed) and make it past my SPAM reply/ack process and I'll
send you more information.)

Dave.

 

[J. J. Farrell]

It is prejudice.


How many friends do you have that are mathematicians? Ten? Twenty? How
does that compare with the thousands of mathematicians world over? Even
those ten or twenty systematically, and in every single occasion were to
ignore your advice that would not imply that all mathematicians would (but
it would probably imply that there is something systematically weird with
your advice).

I also have a number a software engineer friends who entertain astounding
superstitions, but that is no evidence that all software engineers do so.
You just can't generalize from such small samples and anecdotal evidence.


Which might be a sensible thing to do for them.

Which I took to be Nelu's point.

 

[Chris Dollin]

Ivar Rosquist said:


He has proved that he can generalise from small samples and anecdotal
evidence. All humans can do this.

"Everybody generalises from single examples. I know I do." Vlad Taltos,
probably in /Issola/ but I'm not sure and my Brust collection is at
home.

 

[Richard Bos]

So, if you leave your math alone for too long, does it become freezer burnt?

No. It starts growing legs and walks out of the fridge, after having
eaten the cheese and leaving footprints in the butter.

(And then it starts infecting backdoored MS-Windows systems.)

Richard

 

[dmoran21]

Y'know, you guys ought to grow up. I don't see any actual
mathematicians complaining about Nelu implying they're not
programmers.

I don't see the big deal; I know I'm not a programmer and I don't claim
to be. I just thought being able to use C would help me with some of my
numerical calculations, which is most of my practice; I rarely do any
theoretical math.

Dave

 

[Walter Roberson]

Y'know, you guys ought to grow up. I don't see any actual
mathematicians complaining about Nelu implying they're not
programmers.

According to my degree, I'm a Mathematician. Or a Scientist,
depending how you interpret the piece of paper. Either way,
I spend most of my time programming in some form or another
(and is configuring network equipment not a form of programming?)

Whatever it is you call me: of course I check the results of
malloc() and library routines. (Though admittedly, perhaps not
the result of -every- read or write when I'm coding up something
for my own use.)

 

[Charlton Wilbur]

WR> According to my degree, I'm a Mathematician.

According to my degree(s), I'm a musician. I'm not convinced that
that has any relevance.

Charlton

 

[Lane Straatman]

"Walter Roberson":

According to my degree, I'm a Mathematician. Or a Scientist,
depending how you interpret the piece of paper. Either way,
I spend most of my time programming in some form or another
(and is configuring network equipment not a form of programming?)

Whatever it is you call me: of course I check the results of
malloc() and library routines. (Though admittedly, perhaps not
the result of -every- read or write when I'm coding up something
for my own use.)

I'm always surprised by the programming acumen of mathematicians. Some use
a language like C as their stock and trade, using calculation to inform
their practice. Others don't. The prof I had for enumerative combinatorics
was proud that he had only hand written instructions to a Turing machine as
a grad student decades ago. I had a bet with a colleague of his that I
couldn't get him to compile a program. I have yet to collect.

Dr. Griess at Michigan calculated the order of the Fischer-Griess group
without the help of a computer (=10^54). Go figure. LS

 

[Mark McIntyre]

If you think that
Apple sells rubbish (overpriced or not) here is an idea for you to
explore: Don't buy Apple products.

Thanks for the tip, once someone starts making Indesign and Quark
(that work) for some other platform. I'll have a choice.

--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan

 

[Richard Bos]

Thanks for the tip, once someone starts making Indesign and Quark
(that work) for some other platform.

Indesign for M$ Windows works. IME. (I spent most of this week using
it.)

Richard

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Thanks for the tip, once someone starts making Indesign and Quark
(that work) for some other platform.

Indesign for M$ Windows works. IME. (I spent most of this week using
it.)[/QUOTE]

<OT>
They both work fine independently. However from experience I can tell
you that the PC and Mac versions are subtly incompatible in ways which
only become apparent when you send something back to someone who uses
the Mac version , and the entire book reflows. Trust me, this is not a
cheap discovery...
<ot>
--
Mark McIntyre

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
--Brian Kernighan