What is a "computer" ?

[CharlieJV]

Referring to all kinds of old BASIC Programming books, I've found many of these books introducing BASIC by first defining "computer", "programming", and "programming language".

To me, I find it way more interesting to go beyond "computer" and instead consider programming and programming languages in the context of programming "targets".

That's a substantial broadening of scope compared to the old BASIC books.

What do you think?  If you have some time for a sanity/insanity break: 


📚 "What is Computer Programming?" starts with "What is a Computer?"

[johnno56]

Computer. Originally, computer is derived from the Latin word, 'putare', meaning to think; prune.

The English word 'compute' has been around for centuries. In 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote of a morning "computing the 30 ships' pay... and it comes to £6,538. I wish we had the money."

23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703. Samuel was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament.

A "computer" used to be a person who did calculations. In 1731 the Edinburgh Weekly Journal advised young married women to know their husbands' income "and be so good a Computer as to keep within it."

So, there you have it. The first computer was a person with the average memory capacity of about 4 Terabytes. Storage and retrieval of said data will vary with each person... Now. Where to plug in the keyboard?

Computer history... fascinating.

[CharlieJV]

Computer. Originally, computer is derived from the Latin word, 'putare', meaning to think; prune.

The English word 'compute' has been around for centuries. In 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote of a morning "computing the 30 ships' pay... and it comes to £6,538. I wish we had the money."

23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703. Samuel was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament.

A "computer" used to be a person who did calculations. In 1731 the Edinburgh Weekly Journal advised young married women to know their husbands' income "and be so good a Computer as to keep within it."

So, there you have it. The first computer was a person with the average memory capacity of about 4 Terabytes. Storage and retrieval of said data will vary with each person... Now. Where to plug in the keyboard?

Computer history... fascinating.

Bravo!  That should be the stepping stone for every computer science course!

[johnno56]

You are too kind... I think I will leave that task to the clever ones... lol

[CharlieJV]

You are too kind... I think I will leave that task to the clever ones... lol

Scatter-brained as I am and everything being connected to everything else, insta-thoughts:

When one is clever, best to deny that one is clever when displaying cleverness; otherwise, everybody else will always turn to "the clever one" with an expectation of cleverness.  Very clever ...

Which reminds me of "life has a way of confounding expectations."

All of that aside, I am also reminded of:

During a cooperative education work term, my boss did something that to this day remains one of the wildest things I've ever witnessed.

My boss really wanted thing "A" to happen, but he had neither the time nor the resources to make "A" happen.  So in a meeting, he strategically and emphatically took the position that "A" should not happen, and somehow with his wording convinced somebody else to stake the position that "A" needs to happen, and that person committed the resources for it.

And I'm sitting there watching all of this, wondering what for the love o' Pete is happening.

So cool.

Yup, I'm at that age where everything reminds me of a story ...

[johnno56]

"Scatter brained"... Umm... Would this be the beginning of a "circular" argument or point?

"When one is scatter-brained, best to deny that one is scatter-brained when displaying 'non-scatter-brain-ness' (new word!); otherwise, everybody else will always turn to "the scatter-brained one" with an expectation of non-scatter-brain-ness.  Very non-scatter-brained ..."

Ok. Moving right along... Are there any new features being planned for BAM or do you plan to keep it a simple as possible? (this maybe viewed as a veiled concern about "feature creep"... but you did not hear that from me ... shhh...) In any case, let us talk about a Neural Interface ... mainly because the lettering on my keyboard is fading from wear and I am probably either too cheap or too lazy to replace it... lol  So... What kind of surgical skills do you have? Also being mindful that the national health scheme (insert your correct description here..) will probably, more than likely, not fund any of it... Now that I think about it... A $20 keyboard does not sound too bad after all... lol

Have a great day!

[CharlieJV]

"Scatter brained"... Umm... Would this be the beginning of a "circular" argument or point?

"When one is scatter-brained, best to deny that one is scatter-brained when displaying 'non-scatter-brain-ness' (new word!); otherwise, everybody else will always turn to "the scatter-brained one" with an expectation of non-scatter-brain-ness.  Very non-scatter-brained ..."

Ok. Moving right along... Are there any new features being planned for BAM or do you plan to keep it a simple as possible? (this maybe viewed as a veiled concern about "feature creep"... but you did not hear that from me ... shhh...) In any case, let us talk about a Neural Interface ... mainly because the lettering on my keyboard is fading from wear and I am probably either too cheap or too lazy to replace it... lol  So... What kind of surgical skills do you have? Also being mindful that the national health scheme (insert your correct description here..) will probably, more than likely, not fund any of it... Now that I think about it... A $20 keyboard does not sound too bad after all... lol

Have a great day!

Touché !  More exhibited cleverness.  And like cleverness, "When one is skilled in the art of touché ..."

I am always game of more features that are broadly useful when easy to implement and when not making BAM noticeably "heavier".  The once-in-a-blue-moon-with-moon-and-stars-aligned useful feature that is ridiculously easy to add without clogging the works, I'm open to.

More complex "add-in modules" when wanted, maybe.

The hard boundaries/limits of what can be done in a web browser, and a desire of having BAM work across all browsers,that should also help keep feature-creep in check.

For example: I had thought of making BAM as compatible as reasonably possible with QB64/pe, but I'm a little turned off by too many statements/functions.  Now I don't mind so much having alternative keywords for statements (syntax and behaviour remain exactly the same), like the alternative words for TYPE (RECORD, STRUCT, STRUCTURE).  That's nice to make it easier getting code from other BASIC's working in BAM and nice for folk who are used to one word over the other.

But adding more keywords with different syntax: there has to be an awful lot of bang for the buck.

Something I eventually want to setup: various documentation "views", so you can have views of the documentation that have no more and no less than what you actually want to see.

Same thing for the BAM interface.  Alternative views to, again, provide no more and no less than a person wants to see.

$20 dollar keyboard?  Heck, I bought a bunch of used ps/2 keyboards and mice at $2 each, and a ps/2 dongle that connects both a mouse and a keyboard to 1 USB port.  Rock'n roll!

Aside from (not that I'm particularly good at reducing it) managing cognitive/sensory overload, I'm also very weary of mouse-clicky-induced tendinitis of the mouse-clicky finger-knuckle.

We are going to have generations of folk who cannot finger-poke significant others in the forehead when said significant others do something that deserves a finger-poke in the forehead due to tendinitis of the finger-knuckle.  That's a pretty significant societal/health tragedy.

A remote-controlled forehead-poking-machine is just not the same.  Could be a fun job, though, for retired trunk monkeys.  "No Ralph, your finger, not the crowbar."

[johnno56]

So... I am going to interpret, "No", for the Neural Interface... That's ok... I know I have an old hand-cranked drill and some Super Glue lying around somewhere...

I was looking at a program to convert to BAM... Set the "way-back" machine to 1979 and a program by Tom Rugg and Phil Feldman, in their book "32 Basic Programs for the TRS-80 (Level II) computer" entitled "Vocab"

The game is in pure text. I have converted the program to several other Basics in the past and figured that I would try BAM. Although the program itself contains the dictionary words and their meanings within "data" statements, the versions that I had made contains many, many more words via an external file...

I have "struck a snag" even before the game is coded... I figured that I would "test the limits" of BAM by setting up a simple for...next loop to read an external file...

The open statement worked fine: Open filename$ for input as #1. But the input#1 asked for input on the screen... There does not appear to be an "eof()" statement or a simple example. I am assuming that BAM is using the same (or similar) syntax as QB64pe?

If this has not been fully implemented yet, no big deal, I will move onto something else... I can always try the data statement method. It may not allow the same number of words but it should work... Time for some fun!

[CharlieJV]

So... I am going to interpret, "No", for the Neural Interface... That's ok... I know I have an old hand-cranked drill and some Super Glue lying around somewhere...

I was looking at a program to convert to BAM... Set the "way-back" machine to 1979 and a program by Tom Rugg and Phil Feldman, in their book "32 Basic Programs for the TRS-80 (Level II) computer" entitled "Vocab"

The game is in pure text. I have converted the program to several other Basics in the past and figured that I would try BAM. Although the program itself contains the dictionary words and their meanings within "data" statements, the versions that I had made contains many, many more words via an external file...

I have "struck a snag" even before the game is coded... I figured that I would "test the limits" of BAM by setting up a simple for...next loop to read an external file...

The open statement worked fine: Open filename$ for input as #1. But the input#1 asked for input on the screen... There does not appear to be an "eof()" statement or a simple example. I am assuming that BAM is using the same (or similar) syntax as QB64pe?

If this has not been fully implemented yet, no big deal, I will move onto something else... I can always try the data statement method. It may not allow the same number of words but it should work... Time for some fun!

The neural interface thing: yeah, I'm still in this rabbit hole of thoughts, and kind of stuck on this vision of RCA jacks in the back of the cranium.  That's awfully invasive, and not sure about how to unsee things folk might see going on in certain brains...

Yeah, opening files on the file system is a tricky thing (a security no-no, really) for in-browser apps.

I would like to eventually setup in BAM the ability to upload a file to a running BAM program (involves user interaction), but that is tricky too because it is an asynchronous process, so I would need to setup the BAM internals to pause the program, listen to some kind of "file opening and reading is done" event which would trigger the program to unpause.

A messy and overwhelming proposition at the moment because, I may have mentioned before: I cannot stand javascript.