Posts by a13cui@emacs.ch
(DIR) Post #AXg9yLtgUia6yocT2W by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-07-14T07:39:52Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
This is ported over from my old qoto.org instance (and shortened... no 65K char limit luxury here). I used to be @alecui #introduction #intro #introductionsHi! o/I am Ștefan (ș as sh, I also accept Stephan or the equivalent in your language). I’m 21 years old, ♑, he/him, proud #leftist and soon to graduate CS @ UVABc. Sort of proudly living in #romania. My native language is Romanian, fairly proficient at English, slowly learning #finnish (and #italian).Tried a lot of programming languages in my childhood up until now, a non-chronological list of ones that stuck with me for one reason or another being: VB6 (that’s what I started on at 8 years old), #pascal (+ #freepascal and #delphi), #perl (+ #raku), #tcl #tcltk, #lisp (usually #scheme, on a good day #elisp #emacslisp and #commonlisp), #elixir, #php, #forth, #lua, #oberon, #modula-2, #cpp #c++, #ocaml, #fsharp, #smalltalk (+ #squeak #pharo #self), #ada, #powershell, #dart, #matlab, #rlang, #zig, #nim, #cobol and #julia. I’m flexible in learning new languages and technologies if needed.I also do #sudoku and #math for fun (especially functional equations and number theory problems, sometimes calculus and geometric algebra). I am interested in #linguists, #conlangs (#lojban and #esperanto) and #nlp, contemporary (post-‘45, usually post-‘89 for me) history, #balkan history, lower-level stuff (I like to learn about how tools around me work, I’m most interested in #compilers, #emulators and #microcontrollers), #typography and #latex, #linux + #bsd, #msdos, #amiga, #oberon, #plan9, #philosophy, #astronomy (especially in a worldbuilding context) and #philosophy, along with other less notable interests.Nazis and fascists can have a merry fuck off, DNI with me. I am also a spiritual person, a #deist and I find #astrology and #tarot interesting.I hope I'm welcome here!
(DIR) Post #AXxTq9D413WKBR09R3 by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-07-21T02:15:13Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
I am genuinely arguing that we should use #pascal and #ada more. C was made for assembly cosplaying as a high level language (even then, Forth is doing a better job in that aspect...). Pascal is ALGOL-68 done right so it traces its heritage back to a committee of brilliant computer scientists and Ada was made for the DoD. Pascal figured out before C (it precedes it by 2 years) strings (yes, actual strings, not just char arrays), a well structured and strict syntax, native set operators (you can check whether an element is in a set, include, exclude elements, compare them, even intersection and union are supported!), strong type safety (some claim it's too much, but then you have Rust, so...), even OOP nowadays. As for Ada, you have in depth defense by default (as in no implicit conversions (just like Pascal), it treats what would be equivalent types using `typedef` in C as totally different and gives you an error (good job Rust, you at least figured that one out...)). You also get plenty of compile-time checks and run-time checks, as well as an access-type model rather than providing low-level generic pointers (each access type is handled by a storage pool, either the default one or a custom one to allow more exotic system memory implementations like NUMA and thus you never access heap memory directly, but you have to use this storage pool manager (similar to how Zig does everything through allocators). You also don't have to worry about deciding how exactly data is passed in or out of a function/procedure call (you specify the direction of each parameter, but the ultimate decision of whether the data being passed via a register, via the heap, or as a reference will be taken by the compiler or runtime, never by the programmer). It's also the first internationally standardized OOP language with Ada 83.
(DIR) Post #AXxTqB9wlcDQELYgr2 by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-07-21T02:30:34Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
To add to #ada 's praises, it has built-in support for concurrency and distribution (with tasks, protected objects (protected types are composite types whose components are protected from concurrent access by multiple tasks) and partitions (a program/part of a program that can be invoked from outside the Ada implementation, they can run on separate processors and contain their own run-time systems)).Ada also has low-level representation clauses (for people who've had to deal with packets of a specific format, you know how painful it is to do bitfields in C, while in Ada you can just name the fields and it will Just Work, valuable when interfacing to physical devices or communicating across networks). It's just wonderful for those who need absolute control in the low-level space.Unlike C implementations generally, Ada has a comprehensive validation suite and has gone through the ANSI and ISO standardization processes. Ada compiler vendors have corresponding validation suites (ACVC and ACATS) and may submit their products for independent validation of conformance to the standard).Ada's predefined environment includes pragmas named Export, Import and Convention and services that help to import legacy code in C, C++, Fortran, COBOL and assembly, and to export Ada routines and libraries written in those languages (so yes, you can reasonably have type-safe COBOL wrappers that Just Work).Finally, *a lot* of industries depend on it: the avionics, defense, space, air‑traffic control, rail, automotive, security, and medical industries all depend on the language. It would be a security nightmare if you had medical equipment written in C... The European Space Agency (ESA) has been using Ada for a long time, even NASA is using it. In 2019 NVIDIA trusted Ada and SPARK (a provable subset of Ada) to assure safety of their self-driving cars: (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/02/05/adacore-secure-autonomous-driving/).If you want Rust-like memory safety and a trusted language for critical devices, Ada might be for you. :)
(DIR) Post #AYjOATLltD2hVWhVWy by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-08-14T19:17:52Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I am making the leap and I'll try to make my own #emacs configuration instead of installing #spacemacs... this will be a fun ride.I put this on public for a reason: Since we now have #eglot by default, how does it compare against #lspmode? I've exclusively used lsp-mode, but I want to know if eglot has evolved since I last used it a year ago. #emacs #lsp #emacs29
(DIR) Post #AYmtoOCcpePmJsvtQW by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-08-16T11:00:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
lukewarm take (had this talk in private with @mia but I have to share this):#Rust is the best thing to happen to #Ada and they should be used a lot more (especially Ada). Moreso, I believe that Rust is essentially FP Ada with C syntax.Now let me cook (this will be a multi-toot series). Ada, like Rust, is extremely type safe and stringent (they reach memory safety through different paradigms, but they end up having equivalent levels of memory safety). Ada is more procedural/OO while Rust is more functional, from that POV they fit together perfectly. They're both fast languages with a lot of checks. Rust can benefit from what we Ada people have with #SPARK and actually be able to prove that your program does what it says without a shadow of a doubt (SPARK is so good that it overshadows #MISRA C which is the gold standard for critical software made in C). Ada can use Rust's popularity in open source and community (ideally not a toxic one at times), Rust can use Ada's proven track record of handling mission-critical tasks with no compromises whatsoever. Ada can use Rust's successful marketing (holy shit does #AdaCore need to get involved more), Rust can use the lessons that Ada learned in its 40+ years of existence and improve upon them.Rust can definitely benefit from having 1. an actual specification and 2. getting rustc certified (which would mean LLVM by extension), but those are behemoths and it's extremely unlikely, impossible even to audit. Lack of advertising leads to misconceptions, and misconceptions lead to not using the language (I use Tcl and Perl, so I definitely know how it feels to use languages that have been osbourned for 2+ decades).1/2
(DIR) Post #AYmtoPctXT1QjeEO0m by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-08-16T11:14:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I found about 4 types of answers that I have seen Rust and Ada people give in regards to this #rust vs #ada subject:hardcore Ada users will obviously say that Rust will die out like D did and isn't a good choice for safety-critical softwaremoderate Ada users (like myself) think for the most part that Ada really suffers from bad PR and Rust perfectly fits the voidmoderate Rust users have told me that they secretly wanted Ada all along but the tooling doesn't do Ada justice the Rust zealots have repeatedly told me that Rust has a very '83 feel to it, is too verbose and has no ownership semantics (which is obviously a crime against humanity!!!)I feel like I sort of fit in all of these categories. Rust is overhyped, Ada has plenty of baggage, Rust doesn't have integer subtyping, Ada makes simple things complex to do (even if hard to do wrong in the end). There has been no real competitor to Ada until Rust came along. We were vibing in our own niche part. Any competitor needs to be memory safe, real time capable and error avoiding by design. C only had real time capabilites, C++ became a little more error avoiding, Java became memory safe, but lost on the other two accounts, D never took off, Haskell beat everyone up in error avoidance but could never win in any race except up the ivory tower stairs, Swift is focused on iOS and Go... it's a long story. Only Rust fits all of those requirements, quite remarkably. Our forums began having questions like "Rust has X for Y, how is our Y-experience?" (not even "Rust has X, we want X". The tooling is much better now, I can confidently recommend ada-language-server + ada-mode or GNAT Studio. Ironically, AdaCore is also trying out Rust (https://www.adacore.com/gnatpro-rust)... imagine bidirectional Ada-Rust bindings, that will be a dream. Ada and Rust programmers can and should coexist and cooperate so we have more memory safe code and less C code out there.En fin.2/2
(DIR) Post #AYvN5K3nwCxIKZuexc by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-08-06T03:08:09Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/The+NexTcl+ProjectThe NexTcl project will be dedicated to improving the overall Tcl experience. It's an ambitious project, but I am confident it can be done.https://github.com/NexTcl-Project #tcl #tcltk #nextcl
(DIR) Post #AZfbM987vuIA7Vw9o0 by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-09-11T11:18:44Z
2 likes, 3 repeats
heard this is what y'all #rust #rustlang users use, am I right?
(DIR) Post #AZwMM1L8Oac7sGp66C by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-09-19T23:25:28Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
This is definitely what we needed, Chess.com... https://www.chess.com/news/view/opera-launches-new-custom-chess-browserGuess raising the price of premium wasn't enough, our money is getting spent properly.We’re excited to bring the world of chess into this new version of #Opera’s #AI-powered browser to help make the beautiful game that we all love even more accessible, convenient, and fun.— Kuhnert, VP of Business Development at Chess.comSteer away from them and just use #Lichess. It's free and libre, ad-free and you actually get unlimited puzzles and board analyses. Well, stay away from Opera too, but that's for another time.#Chess
(DIR) Post #AZxLtO0fE0tOwZYQTo by a13cui@emacs.ch
2023-09-20T10:49:11Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
I am making a call to all the #USSR #Soviet #SovietUnion and #retrocomputing people (please boost)I am interested in #Soviet computers (specifically the #Agat, #Minsk, #Poisk, #Iskra, #Setun and ES EVM + ES PEVM), however I can't find (with the aforementioned limited knowledge) much info on where I can find ROMs of the original machines. I want to emulate those and see how well they work on the cloned CPUs. I am also interested in the aforementioned CPUs (K1810VM86 mostly, but also КР580ВМ80А and КР1858ВМ) and the specific quirks these had over the Western CPUs. I am essentially looking to know all about these systems, and try to emulate them. Can someone guide me to resources and ROMs for these machines? I'll go through the hassle of translating myself, but as it stands I have no connection to Russian-speaking people.Спасибо вам и хорошего дня!