You're probably right, and Starship is a very silly name for an in-system module.tufty wrote:My understanding was that all 4 starship tests so far have been suborbital and only one has been non-catastrophic (just)zip accident wrote:On the other hand, Musk got to Leo, which others sinificantly failed to do..
For comparison, the 4th test of the Saturn V was the first one where it flew around the moon with people on board.
You know you are old when...Y
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
Re: You know you are old when...Y
Holier than thou
Re: You know you are old when...Y
When you're watching Battlestar Galactica and they mention "the Lords of Kobol" and you think of the programming language...Orava wrote:you know Cobol.
...and it was the original '70s TV series, not the reboot.
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
Orava wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
you know Cobol.
Oh this brings back memories... got taught this at Uni (in the 90s)...because. Apparently lots of the financial outfits were still using it and it would be a useful thing to have an understanding of... glad I never saw it again TBH... remember on screen having to put things in certain columns because of legacy (punch card systems?).
A light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
Funnily enough, I was explaining COBOL to my son yesterday. He's currently studying IT at university.. Then I moved on to PL/1 and the concept of arrays of label variables. If you know, you know.
"massive retard™", "full of shit™", "tiny bitch™", "retarted™", "a bit of a one trick pony™", "petty™", "simple minded idealistic twat™", "miserable humourless fucker™"
Re: You know you are old when...Y
What I remember of Cobol is the strict format, headers and all of that, no freestyling here. And those huge size black and green terminals.
Holier than thou
Re: You know you are old when...Y
Learned COBOL as a first thing in my first job, and SCOBOL too.
Lie with passion and be forever damned...
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
My younger son is just starting a computing degree at uni. They've rowed back from Java and are teaching C for the introduction to programming. Interesting choice. A whole new generation learning how to debug segmentations faults with printf and gdb.tufty wrote:Funnily enough, I was explaining COBOL to my son yesterday. He's currently studying IT at university.. Then I moved on to PL/1 and the concept of arrays of label variables. If you know, you know.
Re: You know you are old when...Y
C or C++ is evil I am a fully Java guy. OK occasionally had to work with C interfaces not liked a bit of that.
Holier than thou
Re: You know you are old when...Y
I don't know. It makes some kind of sense to me.
Because if you're deliberately avoiding object-orientation because "Introduction to Object Orientated Programming" is a later module, then C is about your only relevant non-OOP option.
And by "relevant", I mean that what you're learning - C syntax - will remain relevant later on. Because, you know, Java is "C syntax", JavaScript is "C syntax" (and Node.js is JavaScript), PHP is "C syntax", C# / C++ / Objective C are (obviously) "C syntax", Go is "C syntax", Ruby and Rust are "C-like syntax", etc..
So it's a foundation that isn't completely thrown out, when you move onto other languages later, because so many languages are "dialects of C", as it were, that learning "C syntax" from C itself completely works, even if you're moving onto Java, JavaScript, PHP, C#, etc. later. And if you're angling for a "web development" edge to your courses, then note the "JavaScript, PHP, C#" combo there. For front-end development, gotta know JavaScript. For back-end development, then PHP (Wordpress) and C# (Dot Net) feature prominently.
There's no other simplistic non-OOP language that then goes on to remain relevant - because where better to learn "C syntax" than C itself - for future learnings of relevant OOP languages later on.
But, yes, the big disrecommendation is the segmentation faults, thanks to those bloody pointers. Why would you start with a language that's not memory safe and isn't doing stuff like garbage collection for you?
Well, because if you're living inside a memory safe / garbage collected universe, where you can't make any mistakes... when and how do you learn what the mistakes are? When and how do you learn the habit to avoid making the mistakes?
Yes, it's a "sink or swim" tough love approach, but I can see the logic of learning with a language where you can make horrible mistakes, as all being part of the learning experience.
If you live in a world of garbage collection, then you never learn to tidy up after yourself - because you never need to tidy up after yourself. But, in C, it's non-optional, if you want to avoid those nasty segmentation faults, so you have to learn how to do that.
There's two schools of thought.
HTML is "tolerant" - there is no wrong HTML, as far as a browser is concerned. It might not do what you expect, but it won't crash or throw up an error message, no matter what crap you throw at the browser. There's a school of thought that beginners should be wrapped up in such a "everybody's a winner" everyone-gets-a-participation-medal tolerant atmosphere, so no-one ever gets upset at being told they did it wrong.
And then there's the intolerant "strict mode" school of thought where there is no safety net below the tightrope. If you fall, then you smack hard into the ground. And, man, are you not going to make that mistake ever again. Ouch!
Don't type convert. I've got to learn how to do this shit myself. Don't garbage collect. I've got to learn how to manage resources myself.
It's the school of thought - the school of hard knocks - that says failure is not to be feared. Failure is a learning experience. "Fail fast, fail often". You need failure to know what success actually looks like.
We're taking the training wheels off. Because now when you come off your bike, you're going to get such an almighty shock - that actually hurts - then you're going to rightly develop a massive aversion to getting things wrong.
Tough love. Being harsh with a purpose. If you come off that bike, then it's going to hurt like all buggery. And that's exactly why you're going to learn - very rapidly - how not to ever come off your bike. The "pain exists for good reason" school of thought.
You don't put your hand in the fire, not because "authority" told you not to put your hand in the fire. You never put your hand in the fire, because you did it once and, fuck me, did it hurt, so I'm never ever doing that shit ever again. And, truth is, nothing will ever teach the habit and discipline of always doing things the right way than that burnt hand.
Yes, that burnt hand is a traumatic childhood right there in a nutshell. But show me a mega-successful person who doesn't have a traumatic childhood.
It's the school of thought that the cotton wool you're being wrapped in ultimately doesn't actually help you. Nothing teaches you the ins and outs of pointer arithmetic than a thousand segmentation faults. Like nothing teaches you balance than taking the training wheels off and smashing hard into the ground as you fall off your bike a few hundred times.
It's not the done thing in a "everyone gets a participation trophy" being-upset-is-the-end-of-the-universe environment. But giving everyone an A* and a participation medal is not actually preventing the failures, it's just hiding them. Brushing them under the carpet.
So, yeah, it actually makes some sense to me. A simple non-OOP language that actually allows you to fail, so you learn a traumatic aversion to failure that'll see you in good stead, to learn the habits of success, for the rest of your life?
There is only one relevant option. The C Programming Language.
(I lie. There is another even-harsher option: assembly language. But that's non-portable. So C is the one portable harsh option.)
Because if you're deliberately avoiding object-orientation because "Introduction to Object Orientated Programming" is a later module, then C is about your only relevant non-OOP option.
And by "relevant", I mean that what you're learning - C syntax - will remain relevant later on. Because, you know, Java is "C syntax", JavaScript is "C syntax" (and Node.js is JavaScript), PHP is "C syntax", C# / C++ / Objective C are (obviously) "C syntax", Go is "C syntax", Ruby and Rust are "C-like syntax", etc..
So it's a foundation that isn't completely thrown out, when you move onto other languages later, because so many languages are "dialects of C", as it were, that learning "C syntax" from C itself completely works, even if you're moving onto Java, JavaScript, PHP, C#, etc. later. And if you're angling for a "web development" edge to your courses, then note the "JavaScript, PHP, C#" combo there. For front-end development, gotta know JavaScript. For back-end development, then PHP (Wordpress) and C# (Dot Net) feature prominently.
There's no other simplistic non-OOP language that then goes on to remain relevant - because where better to learn "C syntax" than C itself - for future learnings of relevant OOP languages later on.
But, yes, the big disrecommendation is the segmentation faults, thanks to those bloody pointers. Why would you start with a language that's not memory safe and isn't doing stuff like garbage collection for you?
Well, because if you're living inside a memory safe / garbage collected universe, where you can't make any mistakes... when and how do you learn what the mistakes are? When and how do you learn the habit to avoid making the mistakes?
Yes, it's a "sink or swim" tough love approach, but I can see the logic of learning with a language where you can make horrible mistakes, as all being part of the learning experience.
If you live in a world of garbage collection, then you never learn to tidy up after yourself - because you never need to tidy up after yourself. But, in C, it's non-optional, if you want to avoid those nasty segmentation faults, so you have to learn how to do that.
There's two schools of thought.
HTML is "tolerant" - there is no wrong HTML, as far as a browser is concerned. It might not do what you expect, but it won't crash or throw up an error message, no matter what crap you throw at the browser. There's a school of thought that beginners should be wrapped up in such a "everybody's a winner" everyone-gets-a-participation-medal tolerant atmosphere, so no-one ever gets upset at being told they did it wrong.
And then there's the intolerant "strict mode" school of thought where there is no safety net below the tightrope. If you fall, then you smack hard into the ground. And, man, are you not going to make that mistake ever again. Ouch!
Don't type convert. I've got to learn how to do this shit myself. Don't garbage collect. I've got to learn how to manage resources myself.
It's the school of thought - the school of hard knocks - that says failure is not to be feared. Failure is a learning experience. "Fail fast, fail often". You need failure to know what success actually looks like.
We're taking the training wheels off. Because now when you come off your bike, you're going to get such an almighty shock - that actually hurts - then you're going to rightly develop a massive aversion to getting things wrong.
Tough love. Being harsh with a purpose. If you come off that bike, then it's going to hurt like all buggery. And that's exactly why you're going to learn - very rapidly - how not to ever come off your bike. The "pain exists for good reason" school of thought.
You don't put your hand in the fire, not because "authority" told you not to put your hand in the fire. You never put your hand in the fire, because you did it once and, fuck me, did it hurt, so I'm never ever doing that shit ever again. And, truth is, nothing will ever teach the habit and discipline of always doing things the right way than that burnt hand.
Yes, that burnt hand is a traumatic childhood right there in a nutshell. But show me a mega-successful person who doesn't have a traumatic childhood.
It's the school of thought that the cotton wool you're being wrapped in ultimately doesn't actually help you. Nothing teaches you the ins and outs of pointer arithmetic than a thousand segmentation faults. Like nothing teaches you balance than taking the training wheels off and smashing hard into the ground as you fall off your bike a few hundred times.
It's not the done thing in a "everyone gets a participation trophy" being-upset-is-the-end-of-the-universe environment. But giving everyone an A* and a participation medal is not actually preventing the failures, it's just hiding them. Brushing them under the carpet.
So, yeah, it actually makes some sense to me. A simple non-OOP language that actually allows you to fail, so you learn a traumatic aversion to failure that'll see you in good stead, to learn the habits of success, for the rest of your life?
There is only one relevant option. The C Programming Language.
(I lie. There is another even-harsher option: assembly language. But that's non-portable. So C is the one portable harsh option.)
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
- John Maynard Keynes
Re: You know you are old when...Y
IMO, it's got to the point where C and C++ actually have no place in computing any more. Anyone suggesting the use of C or C++ for any system that even comes close to the internet should be taken out and have their mouths sewn up and fingers cut off so they can't do any more harm.
The rest of your argument makes no sense to me. People at university aren't supposed to be learning syntax, they're learning theory and concepts. I would argue that it is far better to learn multiple languages with wildly different syntaxes than to learn stuff which is similar or sub/supersets of the same language.
The rest of your argument makes no sense to me. People at university aren't supposed to be learning syntax, they're learning theory and concepts. I would argue that it is far better to learn multiple languages with wildly different syntaxes than to learn stuff which is similar or sub/supersets of the same language.
"massive retard™", "full of shit™", "tiny bitch™", "retarted™", "a bit of a one trick pony™", "petty™", "simple minded idealistic twat™", "miserable humourless fucker™"
Re: You know you are old when...Y
I'd argue that there's a place for C in a computer architecture course. Once students have worked up from transistors through to a working processor, C is the way they utilise their newly minted processor without having to edit hex files. It neatly illustrates _why_ you have an stack pointer, a link register, a heap and so forth.
But for actually building programs and learning about algorithms there are much better options today.
The commonality of surface level syntax between C and other languages is a problem, not a benefit, when those languages are not single-threaded, imperative and primitive. It encourages folk to write C code in <whatever> language rather than utilising that language's features and mode of operation; something C++ is still struggling with.
But for actually building programs and learning about algorithms there are much better options today.
The commonality of surface level syntax between C and other languages is a problem, not a benefit, when those languages are not single-threaded, imperative and primitive. It encourages folk to write C code in <whatever> language rather than utilising that language's features and mode of operation; something C++ is still struggling with.
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Dvorak
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
Anyone of you Old Farts ever heard of Modern C++?
It's not like we're living in 1988 anymore.
Garbage Collection my arse.
RAII - anyone?
It's not like we're living in 1988 anymore.
Garbage Collection my arse.
RAII - anyone?
>take off sunglasses
Seamen and fishermen alike swear to have heard voices in the rising tide. Inhuman screams, some of them say.
Seamen and fishermen alike swear to have heard voices in the rising tide. Inhuman screams, some of them say.
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Dvorak
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Re: You know you are old when...Y
[spoilers]They took every C++ weakness and made it a strength. Go, take a look.[/spoilers]
>take off sunglasses
Seamen and fishermen alike swear to have heard voices in the rising tide. Inhuman screams, some of them say.
Seamen and fishermen alike swear to have heard voices in the rising tide. Inhuman screams, some of them say.