🚀 go-pugleaf

sorry for the deprecative air about this posting, but herman rubin
really does get tiresome.


In article <2347@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

   Many years ago, I produced a random number package for the 6500
   with the aid of an undergraduate CS major.

of course, an undergraduate cs major could do it by themselves with a
copy of knuth in hand.

   This was written entirely in assumbler, and was Fortran callable.
   The register quirks would have given major problems in a HLL.

??? this is really hilarious.

of the major sorts of random number generators, the only possible
problem would be with the shift register generators in a language that
doesn't allow exclusive or and shifting.  linear congruential,
additive sequences, even middle square (just for illustrative
purposes) are all trivial (and portable) in hll's.  berkeley's random
number generator is an example of one which produces good results
(good to the last bit, as they say), is very fast, is very simple, and
is very portable.

   It would have taken more than twice as long if I did it by myself.

it probably took longer with your help than it would have without your
help.

   BTW, it was not upgraded for the 6600, because it used a particular
   calling sequence.

?? isn't this what people are talking about when they bemoan the use
of assembly.  keep in mind the fact that the 6500 and the 6600 used
the same instruction set, he is only talking about a change in calling
sequence.

   Most of my code is written by myself.  That is why so little gets
   done.

he said it, i didn't.

   Spaghetti code can have a quite understandable simple structure.
   Algorithms requiring spaghetti code even in HLLs available on
   request.

hmm.... last time i wrote to mister rubin asking for such an example,
he didn't deign to acknowledge the request.

why don't you _post_ such an algorithm.

   I have complained about making it difficult to insert machine
   instructions in HLL code.  For example, the asm on C, besides
   having too many extra characters to type,

horrors!!  isn't your editor there to help you?  emacs and even vi
could be made to add the asm(" ... "); for you nearly automagically.

couldn't you write a trivial sed script or other preprocessor that
would add them in between special punctionation?  say starting at #|
and ending at |#?

   does not allow (on the compilers I have had to use) symbolic
   register designations.

this could be fixed at the same time.

   I have complained about the horribly designed assembler format, and
   the lack of macro facilities to simplify the inclusion of
   constructs.

so why don't you just plug that into your preprocessor, too?  or use a
real macro assembler?  or write your dreaded compass revival
assembler?

   This is definitely not the case in mathematics and statistics.  One
   reason is that a graduate student costs as much as a full professor
   (I kid you not),

maybe where you work.  not at this university.

   and the current estimate is that only half the
   faculty who should be funded are.

whose estimate?  yours?

   In fields where there is a
   tradition of students assisting on faculty projects on a regular
   basis, there is funding.

care to elaborate this and maybe support it a bit?  which fields?  are
you implying that having students assist faculty is the cause of
funding? 

   Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ.
				      ^^^^^^

well, they had a good reputation.
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