2026-03-19 11:16:47 <KipIngram   > veltas: Yes, I "engaged online" before the whole business of online privacy got to be such a big deal, so I've always just used my actual name.
2026-03-19 11:17:19 <KipIngram   > By the time it ever occurred to me to do anything different I was already "out there."
2026-03-19 11:17:55 <veltas      > I got doxed by MS but never really said anything untoward under my pseudonym so just made it official, I'm not interesting/famous so it doesn't matter much
2026-03-19 11:18:23 <KipIngram   > Right - I'm an unimportant personage too.
2026-03-19 11:18:44 <KipIngram   > Screw MS.  I hate them.
2026-03-19 11:18:53 <veltas      > E.g. https://veltas.co.uk/
2026-03-19 11:19:24 <KipIngram   > When I was young, the government still seemed active on the "monopoly prevention" front, but they seem to have given up on that these days.
2026-03-19 11:19:48 <KipIngram   > Back in the 1970's I don't think MS, Google, etc. would have gotten away with nearly as much as they have.
2026-03-19 11:19:53 <veltas      > I don't think MS are a monopoly at all, but they are just make s*** software
2026-03-19 11:20:17 <veltas      > I guess their exclusivity licenses are bad but everyone does this
2026-03-19 11:20:33 <KipIngram   > At times over the years, though, they've behaved in those ways.  For example, they used their control of the most popular OS to give themselves unfair advantages in the word processor / spreadsheet / etc. competition.
2026-03-19 11:20:56 <veltas      > That's what we call a 'moat' these days and it's encouraged in tech
2026-03-19 11:21:20 <veltas      > Also Excel was actually better than Lotus 1-2-3, from what I've heard
2026-03-19 11:21:28 <KipIngram   > They got convicted in court for some of that stuff, but the "penalty" was always just a fine that likely didn't even offset the benefits they perceived they got from the behavior.  That's not how you encourage a company to behave differently.
2026-03-19 11:21:32 <veltas      > And it's hard to have sympathy when Lotus 1-2-3 did the same to VisiCalc
2026-03-19 11:21:58 <KipIngram   > I have no problem with it at all unless the entity invovled is dominantly large.
2026-03-19 11:22:15 <KipIngram   > And am making no comment at all on the relative merits of the product.
2026-03-19 11:22:39 <veltas      > Is it a good idea to disincentivise growth?
2026-03-19 11:23:39 <KipIngram   > I think it is, if the result is to prevent companies from being able to manipulate their markets.  Every economics book I read back when I read economics pointed out that the benefits of the free market system to the consumers arise only when you have a competitive environment.
2026-03-19 11:23:55 <veltas      > Ah but it is competitive still
2026-03-19 11:24:02 <veltas      > The issue I have now is that the FAANGs are basically just tech funds at this point, the nature of their business is extremely broad and you don't get to choose what you're investing in beyond Blue/Red/Pink
2026-03-19 11:24:14 <KipIngram   > I think that's the one way the government should regulate the economy - if it were up to me I'd use the tax code to encourage super-large entities to carve themselves up voluntarily (to avoid the high taxes).
2026-03-19 11:24:31 <KipIngram   > I think too much fin-resolution regulation is a mistake.
2026-03-19 11:24:33 <veltas      > It used to be MS made software, they now make computers and rent servers and cloud infra and invest in a million things including AI
2026-03-19 11:24:35 <KipIngram   > fine
2026-03-19 11:25:12 <KipIngram   > (^ that's a correction to my earlier typing - not a response to you)
2026-03-19 11:25:19 <veltas      > MS have used their equity to buy the supply chain for cloud infra, so that prices go up and nobody else can really compete apart from other FAANGs
2026-03-19 11:25:49 <veltas      > But I still think the market exists, it's just not always that fast at correcting
2026-03-19 11:26:25 <KipIngram   > Generally I think big corporations are not a good thing - I'd prefer an economy based mostly on a huge number of small and medium size companies, slugging it out with one another in the market.
2026-03-19 11:26:39 <veltas      > The approach of MS et al is partly stupid and risky, and partly sensible, and will work out hopefully for their investors (because that's basically everyone via 401Ks etc)
2026-03-19 11:26:46 <KipIngram   > Yes - someone will "win" and grow, but with the tax code structure I mentioend they'd naturally subdivide later, and the process would repeat.
2026-03-19 11:26:57 <KipIngram   > Meanwhile, no one ever gets big enough to steer the market.
2026-03-19 11:27:09 <KipIngram   > Or buy the government.
2026-03-19 11:27:14 <veltas      > Regulating business tends to create unforeseen costs, but your proposed regulation would hit the economy negatively in ways we already understand
2026-03-19 11:27:46 <KipIngram   > I don't measure success by "the most profit" - I measure it by the most benefits to the consumer base.
2026-03-19 11:28:22 <KipIngram   > An effect of what we've done is that many of the rungs have been kicked out of the upward mobility ladder.  It's much harder to start a small business and have it succeed than it used to be.
2026-03-19 11:28:46 <veltas      > Microsoft is owned by its shareholders, it's property that serves them.  If you regulate them you're basically attacking the rights of those shareholders.  Some of those shareholders are wealthy billionaires but a lot of them are just average joes
2026-03-19 11:28:46 <KipIngram   > And upward mobility of the population is what the game is REALLY about.
2026-03-19 11:28:51 <veltas      > But they all have a right to that property
2026-03-19 11:29:21 <KipIngram   > I'm extremely unlikely to be changing my mind on this - I've thought around it for decades.
2026-03-19 11:29:24 <veltas      > MS shouldn't be allowed to do anything illegal or that harms society, but you need to be really careful about how you define this, and breaking them up is over-engineering it IMO
2026-03-19 11:30:09 <KipIngram   > I do not claim it's optimum in every sense - nothing is.  In my opinion, though, it would be better in a way that matters to me.
2026-03-19 11:30:31 <veltas      > My mind is that markets are just a whole lot more complicated than people think, and the more you understand the more you realise a free market is a consequence of rule-of-law + property rights, not regulation.
2026-03-19 11:30:32 <KipIngram   > In the end it's just a values thing.
2026-03-19 11:30:39 <MrMobius    > veltas: ya Kragen is xentrac
2026-03-19 11:30:44 <veltas      > Thanks MrMobius
2026-03-19 11:31:01 <KipIngram   > That's why the public sector control should be very simple and coarse - once they start trying to make fine decisions they're bound to screw up.
2026-03-19 11:31:10 <veltas      > Agreed
2026-03-19 11:31:10 <MrMobius    > I saw him a few days ago in ##electronics if you need to talk to him
2026-03-19 11:31:22 <KipIngram   > That's why socialism always fails - those committees simply cannot match the organizational power of the market.
2026-03-19 11:31:34 <veltas      > MrMobius: That's good to know MrMobius, honestly I was just slightly concerned because I hadn't seen any activity from him anywhere for a while
2026-03-19 11:31:37 <KipIngram   > Well, and socialism also always fails because of human nauture.
2026-03-19 11:31:44 <veltas      > I don't need to contact him though
2026-03-19 11:31:52 <KipIngram   > Put that much power in a small number of hands, and they will almost inevitably abuse it.
2026-03-19 11:32:12 <KipIngram   > Up to and including millions of people dying.
2026-03-19 11:32:15 <MrMobius    > understandable. we didn't hear from the main guy in the msp430 channel for a while then I found his obituary :(
2026-03-19 11:32:25 <MrMobius    > the channel pretty much died after that
2026-03-19 11:32:27 <KipIngram   > :-(
2026-03-19 11:32:36 <veltas      > I try following up with a lot of people who leave here, like mark4 and zelgomer (the latter of which I spoke to not too long ago and he's doing good)
2026-03-19 11:32:58 <veltas      > mark4 I spoke to last.... a few years ago, he's hopefully / probably alright though
2026-03-19 11:33:24 <MrMobius    > oh interesting. I remember their names but never thought about them not being here. any reason they left?
2026-03-19 11:33:44 <veltas      > mark4 left because of the freenode/libera drama
2026-03-19 11:33:53 <KipIngram   > I tried to message PoppaVic yesterday.  Haven't heard back from him yet, but the message went through in a way that indicates he's logged in.
2026-03-19 11:34:01 <veltas      > zelgomer I think because he got fed up with xentrac
2026-03-19 11:34:23 <KipIngram   > xentrac was an... acquired taste.
2026-03-19 11:34:55 <veltas      > xentrac kept accusing zelgomer of threatening him etc because zelgomer kept saying spicy things about his rights
2026-03-19 11:35:14 <KipIngram   > Yeah, I remember that.  Unpleasant.
2026-03-19 11:35:17 <veltas      > Basically we're all quirky here because Forth is quirky so sometimes we get a bit heated
2026-03-19 11:35:31 <veltas      > But I like to think that we forgive and move on
2026-03-19 11:35:37 <KipIngram   > Well, and it was a heated political environment in the US at the time.
2026-03-19 11:35:44 <KipIngram   > We're awfully polarized these days.
2026-03-19 11:35:47 <veltas      > It still is
2026-03-19 11:35:51 <KipIngram   > Yes.
2026-03-19 11:36:01 <KipIngram   > When I was younger we could disagree but still talk to each other.
2026-03-19 11:36:09 <KipIngram   > Seem to have lost the art -  it's very sad.
2026-03-19 11:36:21 <veltas      > Some people are capable of civility
2026-03-19 11:36:29 <KipIngram   > Yes.
2026-03-19 11:37:06 <KipIngram   > It used to seem like along with the disagreements there was a common core of agreed on values and ideas.  But these days it seems like every single thing is a disagreement.  Almost like agreement can't be allowed at all.
2026-03-19 11:37:37 <veltas      > There's a former MP in the UK called Jacob Rees-Mogg, and he is a notorious right wing politician and very old-fasioned, but there's one thing I think most people respect about him which is that he's extremely polite and civil in his discourse... well except most left wingers probably think he's beyond the pale so wouldn't say so
2026-03-19 11:37:57 <veltas      > But they should say so, there are some left wing politicians who are likewise civil and I respect them a lot too
2026-03-19 11:38:11 <KipIngram   > That's how it should be.
2026-03-19 11:38:21 <veltas      > You can go watch old parliament videos from the Thatcher era and it's so different, these days it's all yelling / disdain
2026-03-19 11:38:47 <KipIngram   > I used to be quite interested in politics, but it's gotten so bad these days I've mostly given up.
2026-03-19 11:40:21 <veltas      > I like Owen Jones who is a left winger, writes for the Guardian, and has interviewed a range of people from right/left and stays respectful/constructive
2026-03-19 11:40:27 <KipIngram   > The problem with that is that it also cut me off from current events - I've been trying to catch up on that recently.  More world events than domestic.
2026-03-19 11:41:02 <veltas      > Well in a liberal democracy such as your republic, you are expected to keep up with events and politics to some extent
2026-03-19 11:41:07 <KipIngram   > I think the mainstream media is mostly just down for the count - I think online instruments like podcasts and so on are going to be the salvation of news circulation.
2026-03-19 11:41:07 <veltas      > It's a duty, they say
2026-03-19 11:41:28 <KipIngram   > You do have to be observant about it though, because there's a lot of garbage in that space too.
2026-03-19 11:41:49 <veltas      > Yeah 'legacy media' is a good term, like if I wanted to get a message out 20 years ago I would have written a letter in the Times, these days I'd put it on X or my website.
2026-03-19 11:41:58 <KipIngram   > It's really easy to fall into the confirmation bias trap, because whatever your bias is, you can confirm it with SOMETHING out there.
2026-03-19 11:42:13 <veltas      > The internet has definitely killed old media and that's part of why they're in a bit of a bias death spiral
2026-03-19 11:42:55 <veltas      > It is just inevitable, the best and brightest journalists aren't gravitating to legacy media.  I know a lot of cool stuff is happening on Substack right now for both left and right wing journalists
2026-03-19 11:42:55 <KipIngram   > I sample a lot of sources - if bias is clearly and strongly evident I'll abandon them, but among the survivors I try to listen to a balanced mix.
2026-03-19 11:43:13 <veltas      > Although they're definitely learning the hard way about how they need to be less biased and inaccurate themselves
2026-03-19 11:43:30 <KipIngram   > And even that probably doesn't protect me completely from my own biases - I just try to be thoughtful about it and do the best I can.
2026-03-19 11:44:04 <KipIngram   > I'm fundamentally a right-leaning person, but the current state of the right is a little alarming to me.
2026-03-19 11:44:20 <KipIngram   > I thought the extreme right would never be a factor again - that we'd "learned that lesson."
2026-03-19 11:44:25 <KipIngram   > I'm not so sure at the moment.
2026-03-19 11:44:41 <veltas      > The principles behind free market and property rights are natural and correct, so I would say even if we lose that then we will eventually go back to it because we can't ignore the value of them.
2026-03-19 11:44:51 <KipIngram   > And the extreme right scares me just as much as the extreme left - maybe more.
2026-03-19 11:44:56 <veltas      > Likewise I'd say same about liberty, constitutions, etc
2026-03-19 11:45:10 <KipIngram   > I agree.
2026-03-19 11:45:23 <veltas      > These are not ideologies, they're the evolution of philosophy of politics and economics over thousands of years
2026-03-19 11:45:32 <veltas      > I've heard some people say they're gifts from God, even
2026-03-19 11:45:42 <KipIngram   > But I do think there are people in the world who truly believe the collective has more importance than the individuals, so they're likely to be just as sure of the converse.
2026-03-19 11:46:08 <veltas      > Collectivisim is actually necessary sometimes, like in war or famine etc
2026-03-19 11:46:13 <KipIngram   > Right.
2026-03-19 11:46:25 <veltas      > But the reasons I hear now for it are so weak
2026-03-19 11:46:41 <KipIngram   > But you can just look at the 20th century as a "lab experiment" - whenever the collective was emphasized across the board, lots of people died.
2026-03-19 11:46:59 <KipIngram   > Those "collective times" need to be very exceptional.
2026-03-19 11:47:22 <veltas      > Exactly
2026-03-19 11:47:33 <veltas      > Boo-hooing about student loans in the UK right now is winding me up, the loans are basically just a student tax and they're not exactly expensive.. they just grew a lot after covid because they're pegged to inflation
2026-03-19 11:47:43 <KipIngram   > It sort of b lows my mind that there are so many people - particularly young people - who are so quick to say "Let's do it again - we'll get it right this time."
2026-03-19 11:47:45 <veltas      > But the 'value' of the loan didn't grow that much, people just don't understand inflation
2026-03-19 11:48:06 <veltas      > And the amount you pay is 9% over the threshold, it's just a 'tax', and gets wiped at 30 years
2026-03-19 11:48:13 <KipIngram   > Oh, ouch.
2026-03-19 11:48:16 <veltas      > 9% fo income over a threshold
2026-03-19 11:48:29 <KipIngram   > I've never had a loan that had any terms other than "pay back this number of dollars at this interest rate."
2026-03-19 11:48:37 <KipIngram   > And inflation actually helps the borrower in that case.
2026-03-19 11:48:39 <veltas      > They actually capped the interest of these loans during that high inflation period, so everyone's loans actually shrunk
2026-03-19 11:49:14 <veltas      > It would be a terrible deal for a mortgage yes
2026-03-19 11:49:45 <veltas      > But mortgages go up with inflation too... because that usually leads to increase in interest rates so when your fixed term is up...
2026-03-19 11:49:57 <veltas      > But in the US I understand they tend to have very very long fixed interest terms?
2026-03-19 11:50:15 <KipIngram   > My mortgage was fixed for the whole 15 years.
2026-03-19 11:50:30 <KipIngram   > That's the most common way here in the US, though you can get other kinds of loans.
2026-03-19 11:50:35 <tpbsd       > KipIngram, my mortgage was also 15 years!
2026-03-19 11:50:41 <KipIngram   > I never even considered loans that could change.
2026-03-19 11:50:45 <veltas      > There is one conspiracy though, the state don't want people to understand money, but I think the detriment to the consumer market (if people actually understood how money works they'd spend less) would be made up for the stability and increased investment
2026-03-19 11:51:02 <KipIngram   > Yeah, one of my better decisions, tpbsd.  It'll be paid out in about two years.
2026-03-19 11:51:15 <KipIngram   > Decision = 15 years instead of 30.
2026-03-19 11:51:23 <veltas      > This is happening naturally anyway, Gen Z understand money a lot better ... because they have to to have a chance of getting on the property ladder
2026-03-19 11:51:39 <veltas      > And the internet helps with that
2026-03-19 11:51:49 <veltas      > So much good advise online and in videos, and Gen Z are lapping it up
2026-03-19 11:52:00 <KipIngram   > The state doesn't want people to understand a lot of things.
2026-03-19 11:52:10 <KipIngram   > Generally doesn't want them to be "sharp rational thinkers."
2026-03-19 11:52:13 <KipIngram   > Harder to manipulate.
2026-03-19 11:52:39 <veltas      > Education should include better lessons on finance than it does
2026-03-19 11:52:48 <veltas      > Like how to pay your taxes or plan for retirement etc
2026-03-19 11:52:58 <KipIngram   > If I could wave a wand and get one single change to the world i t would be to repair the education system, so that we produced strong thinkers again.
2026-03-19 11:53:48 <KipIngram   > Right.  I also think it should include some statistics, because understanding statistics is an extremely general tool for understanding the world properly.
2026-03-19 11:54:00 <veltas      > I am a little hopeful that LLMs will actually enable intelligent/curious kids
2026-03-19 11:54:09 <veltas      > Rather than be a way for them to lose their brain
2026-03-19 11:54:29 <KipIngram   > I'd think it will, though I think there's a downside to it too, like when they use it to do their homework.
2026-03-19 11:54:52 <KipIngram   > There's an  "experimental university" over in Austin that bans devices in the classroom.
2026-03-19 11:55:13 <veltas      > It's not the right approach
2026-03-19 11:55:17 <veltas      > I wouldn't send my kids there
2026-03-19 11:55:39 <KipIngram   > I think the middle ground would be to ban them during tests, not necessarily during non-test classes.
2026-03-19 11:55:42 <veltas      > Universities always struggle to keep up with reality, they're struggling more than ever with all the change from LLMs
2026-03-19 11:55:57 <veltas      > And they're too expensive with state loans etc
2026-03-19 11:56:06 <KipIngram   > Yes, they are too expensive.
2026-03-19 11:56:19 <veltas      > We need to normalise people doing vocational/cheaper qualifications or just getting apprenticeshipes
2026-03-19 11:56:39 <veltas      > But the best of us should always invest in their education
2026-03-19 11:56:57 <KipIngram   > I think we'll see such changes.  The internet has entirely changed the "learning landscape" now - I think we just haven't fully evolved through the changes yet.
2026-03-19 11:57:06 <KipIngram   > It's still a relatively recent thing in broad terms.
2026-03-19 11:57:46 <KipIngram   > I'd never have been able to learn all the physics and math I've learned since grad school without the internet.
2026-03-19 11:58:12 <KipIngram   > Honestly, "education" is now almost free.  CREDENTIALED education isn't - but just acquiring the knowledge is.
2026-03-19 11:58:49 <KipIngram   > So there's no longer really a financial excuse for "being ignorant."
2026-03-19 12:02:42 <KipIngram   > Depends on what you want to learn, of course - for some things you need "facilities."  But for other things all you need is your time.  There's plenty out there to "train you as a thinker" that doesn't cost a dime.
2026-03-19 12:05:25 <veltas      > The main advantage of uni now is networking and credentials
2026-03-19 12:05:50 <veltas      > But the degree really is worth the price... if it's a good degree or at least a good uni
2026-03-19 12:06:12 <veltas      > The stakes are insane though, think of all the grads who can't get work right now...
2026-03-19 13:12:13 <KipIngram   > Yeah.  I think these will be pretty gradual changes.
2026-03-19 13:14:45 <KipIngram   > For one thing, the unis will resist them - no institution likes to see its prominence diminished.
2026-03-19 13:21:51 <veltas      > It's actually happening quite quick in the UK, lots of low end unis are running into serious financial trouble
2026-03-19 13:21:54 <tpbsd       > you guys have been having a productive chat tonight :)
2026-03-19 13:22:08 <veltas      > Because I'm in an unproductive mood probably :P
2026-03-19 13:22:14 <tpbsd       > I've been on the phone with my eldest son the entire time
2026-03-19 13:22:21 <veltas      > Nice (?)
2026-03-19 13:22:52 <veltas      > I hope for a good reason I mean(?)
2026-03-19 13:23:25 <tpbsd       > yeah, but I have to be careful because he has a photographic memory, and at 71 I often have a different recollection of the past and he gets annoyed with me
2026-03-19 13:23:49 <veltas      > It's funny how us three seem to talk so much and all live at different ends of the earth
2026-03-19 13:23:58 <veltas      > If either of you are in the UK feel free to come visit
2026-03-19 13:25:21 <tpbsd       > for instance he insisted that in one project I used a glued magnet and reed relays to determine if a stepper motor was jammed, but I know I used back emf, and the source code backs that up
2026-03-19 13:25:42 <tpbsd       > veltas, I would if I was rich and younger :)
2026-03-19 13:26:02 <veltas      > If you were rich and younger I'd tell you to go sunnier places
2026-03-19 13:26:21 <tpbsd       > when I asked him to describe what glue I used and how the magnet was glued, he just got annoyed
2026-03-19 13:27:22 <tpbsd       > veltas, as a Ausie, Ive had a lifetime of sun, overcast and wet would be so novel for me!
2026-03-19 13:28:28 <tpbsd       > for instance, you cant just araldite a magnet to a hardened stepper motor shaft, the glue will eventually come loose, and magnets are hard to glue
2026-03-19 13:29:49 <tpbsd       > to fit a magnet to a stepper motor shaft requires a carrier, ie a cylinder made of aluminium with locking screws or a pin, and a bagnet pressed into a hole in the cylinder
2026-03-19 13:29:59 <tpbsd       > magnet
2026-03-19 13:30:26 <tpbsd       > using glue to make things is just shonky
2026-03-19 13:31:30 <tpbsd       > so in order not to upset my son (hes 43) I just agreed with him
2026-03-19 13:31:46 <tpbsd       > the things old dad's have to do!
2026-03-19 14:23:25 <vms14       > there is something like 99 lisp/prolog problems for forth?
2026-03-19 14:24:17 <vms14       > in the lisp thingy they focus on lists and alike, but i wonder if there is something similar for forth or concatenative languages where you get problems with the stack or something more stack related
2026-03-19 14:24:51 <vms14       > i'm thinking that i want to get more familiar with my rpn lang so i have to write code and solve random problems
2026-03-19 14:26:07 <vms14       > we should find the best forth dev and convince it to write a list of exercises for practicing forth, which i guess would be chuck moore
2026-03-19 15:02:02 <veltas      > I guess you could implement all the permutations of different stack sizes?  Size 2: 2 1 (SWAP), size 3: 1 3 2 (SWAP), 2 1 3 (ROT SWAP), etc.
2026-03-19 15:04:42 <veltas      > i.e. do: 2 3 1, 3 1 2, 3 2 1, 1 2 4 3, 1 3 2 4, 1 3 4 2, 1 4 2 3, 1 4 3 2, 2 1 3 4, 2 1 4 3, 2 3 1 4, 2 3 4 1, 2 4 1 3, 2 4 3 1, 3 1 2 4, ...
2026-03-19 15:05:12 <veltas      > Have you done the exercises in Starting Forth?
2026-03-19 15:08:23 <veltas      > I guess skip all permutations starting with 1
2026-03-19 15:20:05 <vms14       > veltas: ty, and not much of them, i remember printing trees or something
2026-03-19 15:20:37 <vms14       > many*
2026-03-19 15:21:22 <vms14       > but yeah i had in mind looking for books and going through their exercises
2026-03-19 15:21:48 <vms14       > i was wondering whether there was some list already out there
2026-03-19 15:42:09 <KipIngram   > vms14: I learned a lot from this book:
2026-03-19 15:42:12 <KipIngram   > https://archive.org/details/algorithmsforrpn0000ball
2026-03-19 15:42:34 <KipIngram   > It's for calculators primarily, but it is rpn.  Lots of astronomy algorithms.
2026-03-19 15:43:18 <KipIngram   > It's not surprising to me that a lot of Lisp exercises would involve lists, since Lisp is a... list based language.
2026-03-19 15:43:31 <KipIngram   > Forth seems more "generic" to me.  Lower level to some degree.
2026-03-19 15:43:50 <KipIngram   > But that book is good for getting comfortable with rpn operations.
2026-03-19 15:44:14 <KipIngram   > You might even pick up an old rpn calculator on ebay so you could really work through things.
2026-03-19 15:45:56 <KipIngram   > The older HP calculators had four-element stacks; one exercise I set for myself once was to take the roots of a quadratic equation (start with the coefficients on the stack, wind up with the roots in some useful form) without using any off-stack storage.  Keep all the calculations there within that four-element stack.
2026-03-19 15:46:11 <KipIngram   > It's not "easy" - it makes you work - but it can be done.
2026-03-19 15:48:47 <KipIngram   > These days I use a DM42 from SwissMicros.  It's basically an ARM-based hardware platform running the Free42 software, with some tweaks.  Intel 128-bit floating point library, so it's 34-digit precision through all calculations.
2026-03-19 15:49:04 <KipIngram   > I.e., "more than anyone ever needs."
2026-03-19 15:49:20 <Riviera     > KipIngram: You have good taste.
2026-03-19 15:49:50 <KipIngram   > Oh dear - not a comment I often hear.  Thank you.  :-)
2026-03-19 15:50:24 <Riviera     > I'm "stuck" with my HP Prime mostly because I'm old and enjoy having a backlight.
2026-03-19 15:51:43 <KipIngram   > vms14: I think there may be too much emphasis on straight "stack re-ording problems."  I like to think of it as a more "global" problem than that - how do you design your whole program so that when the time comes to do various calculations things are already in the right order, so you don't NEED to shuffle them around.
2026-03-19 15:52:03 <KipIngram   > It's sort of a holistic thing.
2026-03-19 15:54:02 <KipIngram   > There's a gray area between those things too - maybe you don't do the whole re-ordering in one place.  Maybe you sprinkle fewer shuffle operations around earlier.  Get the deeper stuff in order before you bury it with more stuff.
2026-03-19 15:55:15 <KipIngram   > Anyway, if you're really wanting to go deep on this stuff, I think exposure to a size-limited stack is a "different enough" thing to give you extra training.
2026-03-19 15:55:44 <KipIngram   > That will almost always be four; I've seen eight-deep stacks, but that's already getting deep enough to seem "unlimited" in most problems.
2026-03-19 16:03:34 <vms14       > KipIngram: yeah like changing your mind to think with transformations
2026-03-19 16:03:52 <vms14       > like a value gets processed multiple times and you can keep refining a value
2026-03-19 16:04:05 <vms14       > and you can compose any word or sequence
2026-03-19 16:07:46 <veltas      > And then there's me, if I start sweating about stack ops I just start breaking out variables
2026-03-19 16:08:29 <veltas      > I will make the stack order easier 'on arrival', if possible, but that's not always possible
2026-03-19 16:11:34 <vms14       > i have bindings which are some sort of temporal names for a value
2026-03-19 16:11:57 <vms14       > they are actually a function with a value slot that pushes that value when called xd
2026-03-19 16:12:13 <vms14       > 24 name it twenty-four
2026-03-19 16:12:25 <vms14       > 1 2 3 name them (one two three)
2026-03-19 16:13:20 <vms14       > then i can set and increment them, they are some sort of dynamic variable that is local, like a state var in c i guess
2026-03-19 16:14:47 <vms14       > static*
2026-03-19 16:15:03 <vms14       > state var in perl
2026-03-19 16:16:04 <vms14       > the stack juggling is avoided with that, so i do not have problems with the stack