asciilifeform: this is why, to return to earlier thread, pdp11 programmed by a single mind who writes every single instruction that the machine will ever execute, can be a jewel that is maintained for generations,

asciilifeform: i happen to believe that we have not yet devised the means for truly separating - conceptually - computer programs

asciilifeform: if something ~requires~ >1 head, it consists of separable things.

asciilifeform: painful process that they are loathe to reopen or examine at all no matter how hard it is to get it right for them.'

asciilifeform: '...But it is the same problem we find in C++. The question to be asked of massive complexity like that is not "what wonderful things did you find out that made this necessary", but "whatever did you _miss_ that made this so horribly complex"? You can sometimes see people who are really, really dumb go about some simple tasks in a way that tells you that they have arrived at their ways of performing it through an incredibly

asciilifeform: at the end of this long process of grasping something that looked intellectually challenging lie only a complexity that resulted from _rejecting_ simplicity of design at a few crucial points. Hell, it still took me years to figure out what alternatives they _should_ have picked up, and by then it was too late.'

asciilifeform: t was the first time I had really serious doubts about the wisdom of SGML's structuring process, because the massive complexity of it all is _completely_ pointless and a result of spreading the semantics so thin that you had to keep mental track of an enormous number of relationships to end up with an idea of what something should do or mean. It does not have to be that way. It was _profoundly_ disappointing to discover that

asciilifeform: d some of the designs and how it would be implemented, and he was quiet for the longest time before he said that I was probably the first person to have understood what he was _really_ trying to accomplish. That would have been _such_ a great thing if it had been, say, rocket science, but it was not. It was a man-made complexity so great that it had required _months_ of brain-wracking to really get my intuition working. Tha

asciilifeform: 'Overriding and updating old information is something I have to work really hard at. The end result of the way I think and the way the standard is defined is that I immediately saw these massively complex ways to do things that "nobody" understood. Take HyTime and what it calls "architectual forms" -- I vividly remember a long walk around a quiet Tallahassee one summer night with the creator of this concept, when I questione

asciilifeform: but there has to be... ~a~ head.

asciilifeform: (note that i did not specify ~which~ head)

asciilifeform: and that there is not a magical elixir that absolves you of the need to 'fit in head'

asciilifeform: and that if you are using a pile of shit which fits in no one's head, don't be surprised when the inevitable happens

asciilifeform: my position is that this is reasonable, but what is unreasonable is to ever have more respect for a program than its author did.

asciilifeform: in such a way as to guarantee 100% compatibility

asciilifeform: because no one will ever fully nail down the function of the existing orchestra

asciilifeform: jurov: his position, if you recall, is that we are more or less stuck with the turds forever. ☟︎

asciilifeform: jurov: this kind of thing is at the root of a very old disagreement i have with mircea_popescu

asciilifeform: which is what i was talking about.

asciilifeform: have to prove that it is unreachable.

asciilifeform: just because a line did not execute in ten billion hours does not mean that it could not

asciilifeform: trinque: see earlier thread today re: coverage

asciilifeform: trinque, ben_vulpes, anyone else with 'clang' -- here's an idea, use the graph-walker solrodar used to determine the subset of openssl (see old thread re: same)

asciilifeform: 'It is mid-boggling that a protocol that "handles assets worth billions of dollars" is defined only by a bloated C++ implementation -- maintaned by one company, that of course will not be responsible for any losses...'

asciilifeform: the main allure, for me, was 1) drepper goes to the furnace where he belongs; no glibc 2) can switch cpu arch by turning a knob

asciilifeform: after that, it is precisely the same as working with 'stator'

asciilifeform: mod6: note that the toolchain and deps build only ever needs to be done once, per machine

asciilifeform: mod6: have you had a chance to build 'rotor' ?

asciilifeform: just the regs

asciilifeform: the ibm pc, recall, was that abomination where they didn't even bother to use dram chips that passed qa

asciilifeform: who ~knew~ that they were winners as soon as they popped out of the womb

asciilifeform: it was made by folks who did not have any reason whatsoever to give a fuck re: quality or cost.

asciilifeform: the thing was, in every respect, a 'soviet' production in the stereotypical western sense of the word

asciilifeform: and secretary (who did the job 10x better, but...)

asciilifeform: but with typewriter.

asciilifeform: so it did not matter that it was a stinking pile of shit

asciilifeform: and consider also that, of all the toy computers, the one with the singularly worst design in every conceivable way, won.

asciilifeform: that doesn't reduce to 'xxxx chip'

asciilifeform: not the cpu

asciilifeform: anyway, the book is about the i/o chip

asciilifeform: the other giant of the '80s

asciilifeform: it is a priceless tour of 1980s chip design, among other things

asciilifeform: decimation: if that's all you want, get a 'sinclair'

asciilifeform: so can 'ask' the glass a 64-bit integer, and get another

asciilifeform: the reason why 'physical function' is that it ought to be precisely a ~function~

asciilifeform: once 'distilled to bits', that'd be your key

asciilifeform: decimation: what is the point of it

asciilifeform: very often, folks forget just how much analogue strange there is in the world, that is kept (mostly) out of their digital computer

asciilifeform: just don't be surprised when it stops working when it is wet/cold/hot in the room

asciilifeform: (goes without saying that it is only good for symmetric crypto)

asciilifeform: but it doesn't do any good unless there are 2 of'em (at minimum)