#Computer programming

[theinternetarchive]

snoopy used as an example of a character generated by the hal pcg 6500, advertised in compute! magazine, september/october 1980.

[sira0909]

I knew pseudocode had something nefarious going on

it’s fun that Mormonism is based off pseudo-archeology and Scientology is based off pseudo-psychiatry. By that logic the big American New Religious Movement of the 21st century is gonna be based on… pseudo-computer science?

[foone]

So a cool thing my granddad* Alan Turing figured out is Turing Equivalence:

Basically he designed a super simple hypothetical computer, and proved mathematically that it can do everything a more complicated computer can do, just maybe slower or faster.

This is normally brought up for the factoid that could run Doom on Xty Million Crabs, but it also applies to programming languages, not just computers.

See, it means that every programming language is equally "powerful", assuming it's Turing Complete (which is basically just "can do the things this minimal computer can do", which is basically every language except a couple simple theming languages and macro scripting systems), it's just easier or harder to do specific things in a given language. But they can still be done.

So this means the C/C++ your OS and browser was written in is just as powerful as everything else. The Java used for Minecraft and Android phones, the Javascript used for webpages, the C# used Unity, the BASIC used on 80s computers, and DickCode, the joke programming language I made as a university student which had only eight operators, but all eight were different ascii penises a la "8==D".

All equally powerful. You could write an OS, video game, or AI bot in any of these. It just might be a little slower or faster and easier or harder to do (especially DickCode, that one is very Hard).

Aren't computers neat?

*not my actual granddad but I am named Turing

[thewitchoftherock]

This woman is Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. She created the first computer language compiler tools to program the Harvard Mark I computer. This computer was used in WWII after 1944. John von Neumann initiated the computer's first program, but Hopper invented the codes

[noizepushr]

There are three types of coding bugs:

1. Oopsie! I messed up that syntax! Silly me, let me fix up that typo

2. Oh god I never concidered this scenario I’m going to need to do so much work in order to account for it and fix this oversight fuck me

3. Where the fuck is it?!?!?! I cannot concieve of a way this could have gone wrong and neither have all ten of my peers. A phantasm has possessed my code and will not leave

[savagegardensprogramming]

The Purpose of Language in General

I found that Language has three important uses is our every day life.

(1) The first one is obvious. Language as means of communication. We use language to communicate our ideas and desires to other people. duh!

(2) The second one is more subtle but also just as important. Language as means of articulating thought. We use language to construct and hold ideas together. Even if we do not like talking to people, language is incredibly important.

Ferrel children are children who grew in the wild with no access to human upbringing. These children are mentally handicapped and I believe this is largely due to lack of language. 10,000 years ago our brains where primitive but not very different from today. My personal hunch is that crude language skills leads to crude thinking. Thats how we got by in those days. And that is the difference between us modern humans and humans 10,000 years ago.

There are people who do not have an inner monologue yet they are very intelligent. I would bet that these people still have some sort of mechanism similar to language that allows them to articulate thought. Its based on other brain machinery such as vision and emotion.

(3) The third one was pointed out by a colleague. Language is a window to outside observation. We don't have to be involved in the conversation to understand what other people are talking about and learn from them. Documentation important also. History is preserved by written language. Only after written language did humanity started to thrive.

Sooo, what does language have to do with computer science, you may wonder. Well, programming languages are real languages. My claim is that programming is a communications problem. I see the machine as an alien species from ourselves. And the task at hand is to find a way to communicate to them and inform them what we want them to do.

(1) The first aspect (the obvious one) of programming languages is to do just that. We need to communicate to the machine what we want them to do.

(2) The second aspect (the more subtle one but just as important) of programming languages is for our sake to understand what we are telling the machine. We use programming languages to articulate ideas in our head before typing it on the computer. That is why we insist and persist on using JSON and XML to store data. Even thou those formats are incredibly inefficient from the view point of a machine.

(3) The third aspect of programming languages is a form of documentation. Other people can understand what the programmer is telling the machine. Its why open source is popular among programmers.

[bynux]

/* Filename: Discipline.scala */ for (i <- 1 to 1000) { println( f"$i%4d: I will not use code to cheat." ); } // >:3

[basic-retro-programming]

Programmieren in Basic: Computergeschichte

Post #309: Heimcomputermuseum.de, Programmieren in Basic, Ein Streifzug durch die Computergeschichte, 2024.

[nando161mando]

[hotfudgecherryrosy]

Hi! Little update on the Quizlet-like app, henceforth known and tagged as Innaflash. (One of my friend's ideas, and I'm a sucker for puns :) )

Tl;dr of below is i'd like opinions on the UI mockup so far, maybe some alternative color theme ideas.

No coding has happened yet, but I started making a UI mockup to get the brain juices going and also bc i just love messing around with color themes and graphic design, hee hee. I think I'm going with a webcore theme. Default will be purple, but there will be the option to change the theme (i already have the code for this so it's easy to implement). A couple images are above, I'd like to hear what you all think :)

[thelonelybluejay]

3/10/2025 - B-Sides Progress

Goal: start putting together the music journal in Godot

Notes: I had so much trouble with importing the Flutter package into VSCode that I had to switch to a whole other way to code this project. Off to a great start!

Reflection: I'm writing this reflection a week later, but I think godot is definitely giving me a lot more room to do what I need to. I have some basic UI right now that I need to write some code for, and then the "journal" section will be done. All in all, I'm optomistic.

[ihavenomoralsss]

Python is such a cool name for something that’s actually terrible and mean

[mechanical-moron]

Programmers, Web designers, game developers, anyone else who does stuff with numbers on a computer screen.....curious to know if you guys ever dream in code, and if so, do you like it? I for one do not find it to be particularly enjoyable but want to hear what others have to say lol.

[ryan-is-a-god]

The only way to get work done is to play the most dramatic playlist of all time and become the monster you tried to avoid.

[sleepybutalrightiguess]

I'm making pong and accidentally made a screensaver

This has been going on for several minutes.