• 15 Posts
  • 53 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
Cake day: March 13th, 2024
  • hardkorebob@programming.devtoProgramming@programming.dev•Start learning at 50
    22·
    1 month ago

    No to Python, Go, Lisp and C to begin. In fact at this level you just need to get a feel for process. You need to start where u feel attracted to. You need to learn principles and not languages nor frameworks. Im surprised not one of the replies gives an accurate picture of what it entails to think like a computer. Computation is not an efficient brain like a humans. It was made to work with the hardware we invented long ago. You have to learn the rudimentary and boring repetition the machine HAS to do so it can appear as a real memorable entity. A practical suggestion is to go install Linux From Scratch. When you complete that journey you will have a taste of some principles. Then I also suggest to simply rewrite character for character kilo.c. Why? So you learn how much a pain and a workout it is to crunch at the keyboard. Learn by doing. Learn by breaking and briking. Go find a game u love with all ur being and reverse engineer it. Who cares what u know at the moment, the goal is the process not the result and besides nothing is ever finished, just get it done. One baby step at a time. Oh and dont ask any more questions. All of those have been asked, its our jobs to find the answer. Please take all this as a simple nudges. None is written with any ill will, trolling nor negativity. Take away the knowledge not the pressumed attitude behind my words. Forget the internet and just dive into it. Another way is to pay some pro to mentor you. Good luck with that since most persons are too busy and are elite. Whatever u want to learn has to be done in the spirit of neglect. You cant care too much about computation. It is just a process for making fragmented business. No one NEEDS software nor money. We all agree to play these nonsensical games. Have fun and be grateful for the process itself. Good journey to you friend! Its a weird one. Ive been at it for 35 years and Im still a newbie.

    PS The internet is filled with info. Its your job to determine the knowledge and not the judgement on the worth of the person who posted it. Too much drama and toxicity because everyone at the top of the food chain is pushing that vibe. Everyone everywhere is complaining about our violent ways, how we write to each other online and how we are all being subhuman. Peace to all!

    #allerrorsmatter #cod-ape

  • hardkorebob@programming.devtoProgramming Languages@programming.dev•Meta, a Human-Friendly Programming Language
    13·
    1 month ago

    Also to be fully homoiconic, Meta needs to be able to manipulate its own code. Currently, that is done by REBOL 3. REBOL is homoiconic, and Meta is currently a REBOL 3 format. It will take a lot more to enable Meta to handle its own code, so that will take time. Even though REBOL and Red are homoiconic, they’re not implemented in themselves. REBOL has a C interpreter and Red a Red/System interpreter. Meta is two to three orders of magnitude faster and designed to be able to implement itself eventually.

  • hardkorebob@programming.devtoProgramming Languages@programming.dev•Meta, a Human-Friendly Programming Language
    18·
    1 month ago

    To be fully homoiconic, Meta needs to be able to manipulate its own code. Currently, that is done by REBOL 3. REBOL is homoiconic, and Meta is currently a REBOL 3 format. It will take a lot more to enable Meta to handle its own code, so that will take time. Even though REBOL and Red are homoiconic, they’re not implemented in themselves. REBOL has a C interpreter and Red a Red/System interpreter. Meta is two to three orders of magnitude faster and designed to be able to implement itself eventually.

    Meta is for people with an open mind who want to make an effort to improve. You also need to be able to handle the fact that Meta is a work in progress. It’s good, but not perfect. Everyone will find in our projects what they are looking for. If you come to them with a preconception that they can’t be any good, or that they should be the same as other products, your brain will trick you into interpreting everything we say negatively and you will imagine to have confirmed your preconceptions. Something can’t be an improvement or innovative without being different. On the other hand, if you are curious and of good will and make an effort to understand what we are saying, you will find a lot to enjoy and use. You must be willing to have your thinking changed by Meta.

    We aim to transcend a narrow focus on a specific audience. Meta is a project for developers who need power from their language, but also for occasional programmers who don’t have the time to juggle many arcane details, and for people who want to learn programming and are looking for an easier language. It’s a project for REBOL fans, but we also welcome programmers from other languages who want to expand their horizon. It’s a project for Atari and Syllable enthusiasts, but also for all the other platforms. Meta is for fun and for profit. We don’t believe in fundamental contradictions between these uses, and we don’t want to create artificial limitations. We believe that, when embraced, these uses will reinforce each other.

    We make this possible through Meta’s unique combination of properties. Its human-friendly focus and high-level properties reduce the cognitive load on your brain. This brings the language within reach of beginning and occasional programmers, but also frees advanced developers to spend their energy on their application logic, instead of babysitting the language.

    Meta’s low-level properties and raw performance enable it to run on more diverse platforms than most other languages, and allow advanced developers to still babysit the language when they need to.

    Now this does require some mutual understanding from everyone involved. We will build an inclusive community, where anyone with good intentions can feel welcome. The project materials will cater to all knowledge levels, so that people can grow through them.

    Not everyone is willing to make the effort to learn to understand Meta and the principles it is based on. This is usually not because they are not capable of doing so, but because they are already used to other computer languages based on different principles. Some of them even fiercely resist the notion that Meta could be rational and useful, in spite of the more than half a century of scientific and practical history in related languages that are highly influential on many modern computer languages and systems. To understand why this happens, read these articles:

    The Backfire Effect, by The Oatmeal

    Theory of Bounded Rationality

    The Blub Paradox

    Meta is outside their bounds of rationality, leading them to rationalisations that are bizarre to those who do understand Meta. While this is unfortunate, it also shows that Meta is a real innovation that pushes these bounds, towards greater rationality. If you want to give it a positive spin, it is also a clear way to outcompete them. We need to focus on those for whom Meta is within their bounded rationality, so they can achieve the results that show others the progress.

    An odd consequence of this is that Meta needs a two-pronged approach of focusing on both beginning and advanced programmers. Beginning programmers haven’t invested much yet in different languages, so they may as well try Meta. Advanced programmers have the insight to see that Meta solves several pervasive problems in programming, and the mental capacity to learn a different language. Of course, this also makes Meta suitable for medium-level programmers, but that is not in our hands: it depends on their mental agility. One can lead a horse to water, but one can’t make it drink.

    If you find yourself in the middle group, and you do want to make an effort to learn Meta, but you can’t get your head around it, it is very useful to read the following essays. They are about Logo, Lisp and Scheme, but much the same fundamental principles apply to Meta. The second essay explains them in terms of different, popular programming and data languages such as XML, SQL, C and its preprocessor, C++, Java and C#:

    High School Computing: The Inside Story

    The Nature of Lisp

  • hardkorebob@programming.devOPtoProgramming@programming.dev•We are Meta before Mark
    2·
    1 month ago
    Meta [
	Title:   {Fizz Buzz math "game"}
	Author:  "Kaj de Vos"
	Rights:  "Copyright (c) 2021,2022 Kaj de Vos"
	License: {
		PD/CC0
		http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
	}
	Notes: {
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizz_buzz
		https://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest
		https://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/FizzBuzz
	}
]

For counter 100 [                                   ; Count to 100
    Third?: unless modulo counter 3 [write "Fizz"]  ; Display "Fizz" every third count; remember whether we did

    Any [
        unless modulo counter 5 [write "Buzz"]      ; Display "Buzz" every fifth count
        third?                                      ; Remember earlier result
        write counter                               ; Display the number if not third or fifth
    ]
    Write " "                                       ; Separate the displayed items
]
Write new-line