2024-12-10 00:19:33 veltas: this just reminded me, i think at one point i was considering some enclosing words like {{ : foo ; : bar ; : baz ; }} where }} was like your unlink, but between the first word after {{ and the last word before }} 2024-12-10 00:22:11 : {{ ( -- a) latest @ ; : }} ( a) latest @ >lfa ! ; is how it would look in mine, no idea about gforth 2024-12-10 00:23:49 Ah. I haven't looked at it yet, but yes - if you manually unlinked an entry from the linked list, I wouldn't expect it to notice as long as the item was still in its hash table. 2024-12-10 00:24:03 I suspect it only checks the linked list when it fails to find an item in the hash. 2024-12-10 00:24:33 Here's an idea - try defining a pair of words, then unlink the last one, and then run IMMEDIATE. 2024-12-10 00:24:40 See which one becomes immediate. 2024-12-10 00:25:20 Though surely it must reflect the immediate info into the hash table as well; otherwise it would still have to go to the linked list for every word during compilation.\ 2024-12-10 00:25:35 But it would still be interesting to see what happens. 2024-12-10 00:26:56 I've thought about putting a hash table on top of systems with plenty of RAM, but I'd never progressed beyond just imagining sticking the CFA in there. But you'd really need more than that, I now realize. 2024-12-10 00:27:38 It became abundantly clear to me that GForth uses a hash table when I measured its compilation speed. It's just way too fast to be any other way. 2024-12-10 00:32:53 veltas: another one i've considerd before is to just create a private vocabulary, define everything there, and then before you leave the module just alias the words you want to export into a public vocab. kind of reminiscent of the lua module style. 2024-12-10 08:55:19 KipIngram: If you see second link I've fixed it for gforth by rebuilding the hash table 2024-12-10 08:56:09 Which is slow but I don't care. I don't think I'll notice 2024-12-10 08:56:20 I'm a linked list boy 2024-12-10 08:56:54 zelgomer: Wouldn't }} make it unusable? 2024-12-10 08:58:04 I've done the private wordlist thing, but it's actually more effort and uses more dictionary than UNLINK , so I'm quite happy with what I've got 2024-12-10 15:20:23 veltas: same as yours. it links the word before }} to the word before {{, so the last word before }} is still visible 2024-12-10 15:23:08 veltas: i think i don't mind managing the private vocab, my only issue with it is that i frequently want to switch back and forth. i tend to have two classes of words i want to later hide: very locally scoped words that are only ever referenced by one top-level word, which is what your UNLINK and my {{ }} are good at addressing, and 2. module scoped helpers that are frequently used by several public words 2024-12-10 15:24:07 but i acknowledge that a lot of my problems are probably still just carryovers from my c style that should be adjusted 2024-12-10 15:31:53 i had a similar thing when writing my assembler 2024-12-10 15:32:18 because a) AVR has instructions like AND and OR which directly collide with forth words 2024-12-10 15:32:47 and b) i wanted to be able to use IF as an assembler macro if you get what i mean 2024-12-10 15:33:42 yes. in forth the assembler opcodes are usually suffixed with a comma, like AND, and OR, so you don't have that collision. idk what the idiomatic fix for your (b) is. 2024-12-10 15:34:29 maybe IF, i guess 2024-12-10 15:37:37 zelgomer: the thing is that it's a cross assembler 2024-12-10 15:38:03 so the vast majority of a file is assembly 2024-12-10 15:38:15 so having every opcode be suffixed with , would just be noise 2024-12-10 17:06:22 Understandable 2024-12-10 21:46:50 > seems to be categorised as artist, but engineer would equally apply 2024-12-10 21:47:24 one of the things I learned at Burning Man was that engineering and art are the same set of activities, but with two different value systems 2024-12-10 21:47:59 lf94: that's awesome! congratulations on making them in the first place! 2024-12-10 21:49:50 KipIngram: wrt "is really needed," only death is mandatory. Nothing else in life is *really* needed, not even breathing. 2024-12-10 21:50:53 so you have to decide what you *value* rather than what you *need* 2024-12-10 21:51:03 23:50 < Zarutian_iPad> basically a line just has counts on when to flip from 0 (background) to 1 and vice versa 2024-12-10 21:51:14 this is the representation used in METAFONT 2024-12-10 21:52:20 I think? I know it has a representation where you just have counts at which you increment or decrementing the ink count, and any nonzero region gets colored black 2024-12-10 21:54:09 and I think that at some point that gets reduced to just the counts 2024-12-10 22:09:29 This is re: use of graphics? 2024-12-10 22:11:04 I don't disagree with you, but I'd differentiate between "value for functionality reasons" vs. "value for aesthetic reasons." I not finding good words here, but I figure you must know what I mean? Maybe "does it really help you get the job done faster," vs. "do you just think it's cool"? 2024-12-10 22:12:34 Just as an example, if we set aside charts and other such things, I'd say that the core functionality of a spreadsheet doesn't need graphics at all. I'm just talking about numbers in cells. Of course when you add charts that changes the landscape. 2024-12-10 22:12:48 So I'm not really proposing that real world spreadsheets don't need graphics. 2024-12-10 22:13:02 Why would you want to get a job done faster in the first place? Or get a job done at all? 2024-12-10 22:13:28 :-) Because that's how we collectively create all the stuff we need to live? 2024-12-10 22:13:39 But you don't need to live. You can die. Why do you want to live? 2024-12-10 22:13:53 Ah, you're just trolling me now. 2024-12-10 22:14:02 I'm not. It's a serious question. The most serious question, in fact. 2024-12-10 22:14:42 I have no answer for you - I just find life to be extremly ypleasant. I suppose it's an emotion-based value. 2024-12-10 22:14:57 There are different analyses of it, but one common conclusion (not the only one) is that in the end living is worthwhile because it leads to happiness and pleasure which outbalances the misery and suffering it also occasions. 2024-12-10 22:16:10 I'm probably more familiar with Jordan Peterson's thoughts on this than anyone else's. What you just said summarizes him decently. Suffering is inherent in life - none of us avoid it completely. So the idea is to try to live your life in a way that makes the positives outweigh that. 2024-12-10 22:16:11 It sounds like you're in accordance with that view — you're seeking pleasure. Your values are, at the root, hedonic. Getting the job done, if it can be justified at all for you, must be justified in terms of pleasure. Or perhaps avoidance of suffering. Is that right? 2024-12-10 22:16:50 That is, the reason to spend time on the numbers in the cells in the spreadsheet is because they ultimately lead to pleasure? 2024-12-10 22:16:59 I like immediate pleasure as much as anyone, but I think that long-term things are more important. And also there are other people whose well-being I value - my family most of all. 2024-12-10 22:17:21 life has a single purpose - to survive - without survival, life fails 2024-12-10 22:17:49 we all fail eventually, but that doesn't mean we can't succeed for a while :) 2024-12-10 22:17:51 Survival is the most futile possible purpose — it's the one thing you're guaranteed to fail at. Anything else is possible, if unlikely, but not survival. 2024-12-10 22:18:09 It doesn't have to be permanent to be valuable. 2024-12-10 22:18:14 Agreed! 2024-12-10 22:18:19 indeed 2024-12-10 22:18:40 As for your family's well-being, how would you define it? In the same hedonic terms, happiness minus suffering? 2024-12-10 22:18:46 And an evolutionary biologist would argue that it primarily needs to be long enough to reproduce, and beyond that it's "optional." 2024-12-10 22:19:52 You've just accidentally switched to a different meaning of "need". Let's stick with trying to understand human values for a while rather than fungus values. 2024-12-10 22:19:54 That feels reasonable to me - my daughters are more important to me than anything else. I figure once the last one's done with college (about three years), hanging around beyond that is a bonsu. 2024-12-10 22:19:57 bonus 2024-12-10 22:20:23 At that point I'll feel like my responsibility boxes are mostly checked. 2024-12-10 22:20:44 Okay, so you want your life to be pleasant, and your daughters' lives to be pleasant, and that's what justifies spending time on responsibilities and getting the job done even when it isn't immediately pleasant? 2024-12-10 22:21:24 Not that I regard putting one's kids through college as a REQUIRED responsibility - not everyone can do it, and that's ok; college kids can work too. It's just a burden my wife and I chose to take on. 2024-12-10 22:22:08 In that value system, aesthetics — direct sensory pleasure — becomes an end in itself, while the numbers in the spreadsheet that help get the job done are merely an optional (and sometimes counterproductive) means to that end. 2024-12-10 22:22:13 That's fair enough, though I definitely wouldn't want the job to be burdensome ALL THE TIME. None of them are fun all the time, though. 2024-12-10 22:23:28 You spend quite a large fraction of your life working, if you're in the mainstream; it's certainly good for it to be enjoyable. 2024-12-10 22:23:42 So I think the question 'Maybe "does it really help you get the job done faster," vs. "do you just think it's cool"' is looking at things backwards. Although possibly "cool" is not exactly 100% aligned with "producing the kind of sensory pleasure conducive to real happiness", we can probably suppose that there's at least a strong correlation. 2024-12-10 22:24:07 I'm close enough to being done now that "not unpleasant" is good enough for me, but I'd hope for better over the course of an entire career. 2024-12-10 22:24:53 Oh, I see what you're getting at now (finally). Is the tool enjoyable to use? 2024-12-10 22:25:19 Right. Or, does it produce things that are themselves beautiful, enabling the user to bring beauty into the world? 2024-12-10 22:25:34 I think the public at large probably puts more value on the glitzy bells and whistles than experts do. I might be wrong, but my sense is that experts are more "utilitarian." 2024-12-10 22:25:46 I spent about an hour this morning photographing flowers and bees and the sunrise, listening to birds sing, etc. Although I could be mistaken, I think that kind of experience makes me happier — as well as the people around me. 2024-12-10 22:26:20 Well, what you're describing above — a hedonic value system based on seeking the greatest pleasure minus pain — is textbook Utilitarianism. 2024-12-10 22:27:26 Glitzy bells and whistles are sometimes not actually good but just novel. It can be hard to distinguish novelty from beauty; it's hard to recognize beauty when we become too accustomed to it. 2024-12-10 22:28:02 Hmmm. I don't entirely agree - I think there are different forms of utilitarianism, of which you're describing one. Maybe I chose the wrong word. What I'm trying to get at is that "getting the job done" can be the primary pleasure to some people. And the tool shouldn't be "painful" to use, but I question, for example, whether a non-chart / non-other graphics spreadsheet would lose anything at 2024-12-10 22:28:05 all being implemented in console. 2024-12-10 22:28:15 I LIKE console and try to use the console whereever I can. 2024-12-10 22:28:38 I'm not making the claim that Utilitarianism is correct; just that you can't justify completely disregarding aesthetics on a Utilitarian basis, even if the steel mill producing good steel ultimately is more important to its Utility than what it smells like. 2024-12-10 22:28:40 I take pleasure from the efficiency of my tool too. 2024-12-10 22:29:00 Granted that's not something most people would care about or even notice, but I do. 2024-12-10 22:29:11 I mostly agree, and I think most people care a lot about it. 2024-12-10 22:29:22 It bugs me that our computers are thousands and thousands of times faster than they used to be but in many ways can seem slower. 2024-12-10 22:29:48 Yes. I'm not a big fan of character-cell terminal emulators, but I don't have a better alternative to point to at the moment. 2024-12-10 22:29:49 I think when you hit the power button on a modern computer it should be on and ready to use before you can get your finger off the switch. 2024-12-10 22:29:59 Yes. 2024-12-10 22:30:57 You should be able to install updates without having to reboot. 2024-12-10 22:30:57 Yes. 2024-12-10 22:31:11 But one of the things I dislike about character-cell terminal emulators is that aesthetically they are pretty far inferior to even 20th-century Linotype-printed books, much less medieval illuminated manuscripts. 2024-12-10 22:31:18 I've got to speak on a phone call here - I'll pop back in a bit to catch up. Interesting conversation. 2024-12-10 22:31:21 And I don't think that's a question of "bells and whistles". 2024-12-10 22:32:03 I think it's the same kind of consideration as not having long and unpredictable delays in the user interface, which is another thing I hate about current computer systems.