You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

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On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >rest; I'll stick with that.

PowerBasic.

Python isn't bad; it looks a lot like Basic, except for the stupid
indentation.

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Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the rest; I'll stick with that.

My 'best' language is ALGOL. The modern equivalent is PHP which, with a
bit of improvement, could be made almost as good as ALGOL


--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

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On 11/1/2024 11:25 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

My 'best' language is ALGOL. The modern equivalent is PHP which, with a
bit of improvement, could be made almost as good as ALGOL

I really enjoyed Algol (68). But, tended to require a bit
more keystrokes to get a problem solved. Considerably better than
Pascal and PL/1 (the other "teaching languages" in use at the time).

C is a win if you can think in terms of hardware; especially
if you are directly interfacing to hardware (hard to imagine
writing a VMM system in any other HLL). I can't imagine knowing
*where* to insert barriers in other HLLs (will the compiler be
able to handle all use cases for me?)

I use Limbo as a scripting language as it has the familiarity
of C without the pointer issue (safety for non-programmers),
adds support for concurrency, GC and *lists* (annoying to
have to reinvent for other languages... esp those that don't
support pointers!)

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On 11/1/2024 3:47 PM, Don Y wrote:

On 11/1/2024 11:25 AM, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
I use Limbo as a scripting language as it has the familiarity
of C without the pointer issue (safety for non-programmers),
adds support for concurrency, GC and *lists* (annoying to
have to reinvent for other languages... esp those that don't
support pointers!)

It also supports distributed applications without having to
"litter" the user's code.

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On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

With C++, there is just too much "magic" happening "between
the lines"... i.e., where there is no VISIBLE code executing.

Sadly, there are parts of C++ that would make good additions
to C -- but, not with all the extra baggage that gets dragged in.

[EC++ doesn't add anything *truly* worthwhile]

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On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

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On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 16:03:00 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

We want to time the execution of a control algorithm. One way to time
it is to run it in a loop maybe 100K times and measure that with a
stopwatch. But a very smart compiler might run it once, notice that
nothing has changed, and skip the reruns.

It's best to bang a port pin and measure it with an oscilloscope.

We've had FPGA compilers do that sort of thing, optimize out
intentional delays. One fix is to XOR signals with a level from a pin
that *we* know is always low.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/1/24 23:50, Nick Hayward wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

C++ is an abberation. It completely misses the point of C,
which is basically a language intended to map efficiently to
the underlying hardware.

Some features of C++ are handy, but most are completely over
the top. Some are downright harmful.

Jeroen Belleman

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On Fri, 01 Nov 2024 16:54:44 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 16:03:00 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

I think that the complexity ratio between C and C++ well exceeds ten.

Have kernel debugger, will travel. Well, now days it's had kernel
debugger, would travel.

We want to time the execution of a control algorithm. One way to time
it is to run it in a loop maybe 100K times and measure that with a
stopwatch. But a very smart compiler might run it once, notice that
nothing has changed, and skip the reruns.

Yeah. In C, one can declare something to be "volatile", which tells
the optimizer that it is not alone, that something invisible may
change it.

There were some compilers this treated volatile as friendly advice,
versus royal command, but those compilers were soon stamped out. But
they do pop up from time to time in new products.

It took a while for compilers to handle mutual-exclusion
functions/commands correctly - in most architectures, one must block
interrupts for this to work correctly. It's a long story, and is a
good reason to work in assembly for that.

It's best to bang a port pin and measure it with an oscilloscope.

Yes.

We've had FPGA compilers do that sort of thing, optimize out
intentional delays. One fix is to XOR signals with a level from a pin
that *we* know is always low.

One would assume that there is a FPGA equivalent to volatile.

Joe Gwinn

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On 11/1/2024 5:05 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

I think that the complexity ratio between C and C++ well exceeds ten.

Possibly. But, the cognitive load is roughly an order of magnitude.
If the developer can't "grok" (in the most literal sense of the word)
what's going on, what hope has he?

It took a while for compilers to handle mutual-exclusion
functions/commands correctly - in most architectures, one must block interrupts for this to work correctly. It's a long story, and is a
good reason to work in assembly for that.

With modern processors, there are considerably more pitfalls than that.
Most "programmers" haven't a clue as to what a "barrier" is nor when
(or why!) to use them.

And, as hardware has become more featureful, the needs for talking
to the iron UNAMBIGUOUSLY are increasing, constantly. Open door
for obscure, intermittent bugs...

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"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

When I first did anything serious in c, with Borland c++ 1.0, it became apparent that even if I didn't need any c++ features it was
better to use a c++ compiler because I found it harder to write an incorrect program using a c++ compiler than a c compiler.
Sure I had to do things like add function prototypes and be more rigorous with type declarations and other things but that helped
make sure that my code was correct.
And I could do things such as complex j = complex(0,1) and go from there.

Not long after that I learned Java. There are two things I like about Java. Object oriented and threads.
Now I could pretty much make my own variable types and I could do class something implements runnable and have it go off and do
something while the main program did something else. Much like real hardware can do any number of things in parallel.
Ok you can't do operator overloading in Java but who needs that?

If I did need real (digital) hardware I could always get Cypress Warp to turn my VHDL into a 22V10 or other device.
Whoever wrote Warp's ability to turn VHDL into hardware must have been a genius. Other (way more expensive) VHDL compilers would
just choke on my code.

I haven't touched c for must be at least 20 years by now and I never really got into c++ except as described above.

Now if I need to code anything I'll reach for either php if it needs to be web page oriented or otherwise python.

While I'm sure it can be done, I can't imagine trying to write something like this in c

#Make a copy of the list so we can iterate over iplist and modify outlist. outlist = iplist.copy()

with open(args.blackfile) as cidrs:
for ip in iplist:
iptocheck = ipaddress.ip_address(ip)
cidrs.seek(0)
for cidr in cidrs:
cidrtocheck = ipaddress.ip_network(cidr.strip())
if iptocheck in cidrtocheck:
try:
outlist.remove(ip)
except ValueError: #Ignore the exception if it's already removed.
pass
break #No need to keep looking if we found it.

Writing it in python is almost like asking AI to do it (and I have sometimes found online AI code generators useful).
You can have it done in a few minutes.
I don't see why anyone would think python's indentation is stupid, unless they haven't used it to any real extent or haven't used
notepad++

So in my case it's not possible to stick with c because I believe in using the best tool for the job. I left c behind a long time
ago.

I'm not saying c shouldn't be used. Not at all. If you need a replacement for assembler then use c because that is what it was
designed for.

I forget when I last use assembler. Maybe 68020 about 30 years ago.

These days I'd expect to see megabytes of code compiled from a high level language doing what could be done on a 6502 with a bit of
thought.

But thinking is hard, and in any case management will say that the 6502 code isn't portable so can't be used.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Fri, 01 Nov 2024 20:05:06 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Nov 2024 16:54:44 -0700, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 16:03:00 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> >>wrote:

On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

I think that the complexity ratio between C and C++ well exceeds ten.

Have kernel debugger, will travel. Well, now days it's had kernel
debugger, would travel.

We want to time the execution of a control algorithm. One way to time
it is to run it in a loop maybe 100K times and measure that with a >>stopwatch. But a very smart compiler might run it once, notice that
nothing has changed, and skip the reruns.

Yeah. In C, one can declare something to be "volatile", which tells
the optimizer that it is not alone, that something invisible may
change it.

There were some compilers this treated volatile as friendly advice,
versus royal command, but those compilers were soon stamped out. But
they do pop up from time to time in new products.

It took a while for compilers to handle mutual-exclusion
functions/commands correctly - in most architectures, one must block >interrupts for this to work correctly. It's a long story, and is a
good reason to work in assembly for that.

It's best to bang a port pin and measure it with an oscilloscope.

Yes.

We've had FPGA compilers do that sort of thing, optimize out
intentional delays. One fix is to XOR signals with a level from a pin
that *we* know is always low.

One would assume that there is a FPGA equivalent to volatile.

Joe Gwinn

Some allow a "keep" attribute to be applied to a gate or whatever.
That seems to be a weak suggestion.

The other fix is to design logic that works but is too complex for any
compiler to understand and optimize.

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On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.
It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are
strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be sure where
the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm
getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as
the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking more like a
constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate
drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider range of
voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the
FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has been
mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental
component

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

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On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.
but fun for simple math...
No floating point shit when doing asm .
most human relevant things can be done in 32 bit integer.

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80
It ran BASIC, a good BASIC.
Then I converted it to a CP/M machine, running the C80 C compiler.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/index.html
Added all sortd of I/O:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/diagrams/index.html

At work I was using the first IBM PCs..
designing ISA cards with all sort of things on it, like vector stuff,
process control, what not.
My CP/M running Z81 (by then) was faster than the IBM due to the RAMDISK I build.

Still using C now at home and Micochip PIC asm...
No bloat today

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On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward <nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

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On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward ><nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

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On 2024-11-01, Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the rest; I'll stick with that.

Pretty much agree.

I prefer to write in what I call "C+", using some of the extra features of C++ but without all the insane template metaprogramming. Classes are useful for structure, and things like std::string and std::map really help simplify the higher-level operations (though it feels dirty knowing that clever one-liner
is about to generate 1000's of instructions), but, as said elsewhere, there
can be too much magic in other peoples code - that innocuous '}' can end up running yards of code in destructors, and you can't always trust the simple things like '+', as they may have been subverted to do all kinds of stuff.

A C++ purist would choke on my code - std::maps here and
*((unsigned char *) reg_ptr) = 0x34; there!

For scripting I like bash (or sh+, to continue the nomenclature), and perl.

"If you're mostly manipulating files, use bash, if you're mostly manipulating the content of files, use perl. If you're tickling the hardware, use C[+] or asm".

I still write a lot of PIC asm, and think anyone who wants to use a HLL on a low-powered mirocontroller with less than 1K of RAM/ROM is an idiot.

javascript is nice for client-side browser code. I tend to write it like C,
and won't touch any of the frameworks like node.js though.

I once wrote a FORTH compiler (or interpreter, as some people view it), and
a bunch of software using it, for a specific project. A bit too write-only
for my liking now.

BASIC-PLUS (the RSTS-E flavour) was my first serious high level language,
but I avoided most of the brain damage by already being fluent in machine
code (as in typing in the hex) and assembler. Pascal was forced on us at
uni, but as a hardware / low level guy it was frustrating the you couldn't really do anything useful with it (I didn't consider writing yet another
sort or factorial algorithm "useful").

COBOL sort-of pays my wages, but I couldn't write a word of it. I work on
the software emulation of the ancient mainframe architecture that still
runs a lot of high-value business applications.

Java, python, ruby, c#, rust and all other the modern shit can just [go away] as far as I'm concerned - they're all non-solutions to the wrong problems.

Now where's my soldering iron...

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

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On 11/2/2024 5:37 AM, Ian wrote:

Java, python, ruby, c#, rust and all other the modern shit can just [go away] as far as I'm concerned - they're all non-solutions to the wrong problems.

Rust has some value as C-ish syntax but with stronger type checking.
And, its efforts to avoid pointer abuse.

But, like most languages, seems to want to make bad behaviors
illegal instead of teaching folks how to avoid them -- WHEN THEY
SHOULD BE AVOIDED (and not more!) Imagine not being allowed to connect
one *component* to another out of fear you might not know what you
are doing!

[How, in C, do you effect a transfer of control to the instruction
at 0x0..0? Should I also be prohibited from transfering control
to the instruction located at the maximum logical address? Or, to
the current address??]

And, the whole notion of variable shadowing is annoying and
likely confusing: WHAT (type!) is 'x', *now*? Too arbitrary
scoping rules.

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On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward ><nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

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On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math
signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB
version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11
programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up
and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in
c now.

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On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.
but fun for simple math...
No floating point shit when doing asm .
most human relevant things can be done in 32 bit integer.

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80
It ran BASIC, a good BASIC.
Then I converted it to a CP/M machine, running the C80 C compiler.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/index.html
Added all sortd of I/O:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/diagrams/index.html

At work I was using the first IBM PCs..
designing ISA cards with all sort of things on it, like vector stuff,
process control, what not.
My CP/M running Z81 (by then) was faster than the IBM due to the RAMDISK I build.

Still using C now at home and Micochip PIC asm...
No bloat today

About 30 years ago, I bought a C compiler from Microsoft. It came in a foot-cube box with thumping great manuals and umpteen discs. What a
pile of shit that turned out to be. It was *riddled* with bugs and the Microsoft 'support' people were as dense as pig shit and didn't seem
to know a thing about the product. But that didn't stop them keeping
me tied up on the line racking up charges while they came up with ever
more ingenious tactics of trying to cover up how vacuous they really
were on the subject. I subsequently migrated to Borland and life got a
hell of a lot better, thankfully.

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On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math
signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB
version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used >pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11
programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up
and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in
c now.

I use for example C on my PCs and the Raspberry Pis I have.
C is yery portable, libraries and open source applications everywhere.
gcc is a nice compiler that supports many architectures.
Stuff I wrote for the PC in C comp[iles and runs on the Raspberries...
This Usenet newsreader I use now I wrote in the late nineties when moving to Linux
as there was no Free Agent for Linux...
Still using it, now posting from a Pi4 8 GB.
It uses linked lists, I have a database of Usenet postings going back to these days.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
There are some compatibility issues, but that is because the graphics library I use
had some changes, but can work around it.
More C code:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
There is a simple 8052 assembler written in C on that webpage too.
And a z80 dissasembler .
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/index.html
etc etc
My website is basic html.

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On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:46:50 +0000) it happened Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <beecij9b6q9s1tccqch6a9hhnege4h5507@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.
but fun for simple math...
No floating point shit when doing asm .
most human relevant things can be done in 32 bit integer.

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80
It ran BASIC, a good BASIC.
Then I converted it to a CP/M machine, running the C80 C compiler.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/index.html
Added all sortd of I/O:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/diagrams/index.html

At work I was using the first IBM PCs..
designing ISA cards with all sort of things on it, like vector stuff, >>process control, what not.
My CP/M running Z81 (by then) was faster than the IBM due to the RAMDISK I build.

Still using C now at home and Micochip PIC asm...
No bloat today

About 30 years ago, I bought a C compiler from Microsoft. It came in a >foot-cube box with thumping great manuals and umpteen discs. What a
pile of shit that turned out to be. It was *riddled* with bugs and the >Microsoft 'support' people were as dense as pig shit and didn't seem
to know a thing about the product. But that didn't stop them keeping
me tied up on the line racking up charges while they came up with ever
more ingenious tactics of trying to cover up how vacuous they really
were on the subject. I subsequently migrated to Borland and life got a
hell of a lot better, thankfully.

C/80 (for Z80) was a nice C compiler
In 1998 I bought a computer magazine at the train station and it came with a CD with SLS Linux
That distro had, among other things, gcc as C compiler.
Moved to Linux right away and been using gcc ever since.
I alaready had a book on Unix, so it took just a few hours to get working in linux.
The Unix book I had bought because years earlier I worked a while at a big linear accelerator where they used those PDP things that
ran Unix.

For work I have had to work with Microsoft stuff and C++ and what not, what a mess.
These days you can just ask AI to write the code for you?

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"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:p5ecij1jf5a4in5mnmelkdfrovelr0esko@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

Ah lex and yacc.
Well if you're going to use any kind of compiler/interpreter, someone has to write it.

Does LTSpice originate from designers wanting to play with simulation because putting real parts together isn't interesting?

Managers tend to like simulation because you don't have to get your hands dirty.
At least not until the design which worked fine in simulation either doesn't work at all or has some unexpected issue in reality.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:05 -0700) it happened john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote in <p5ecij1jf5a4in5mnmelkdfrovelr0esko@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

I remember having to use Pascal...
Did get into an argument with some prof when I pointed out an error is his paper.

I have had arguments with teachers before in schools...
When the exams came I passed.. Bye!
OTOH I met some teachers later and they even remembered me
and were all curious and enthusiastic... asked what do you do these days?
nice.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin ><JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math
signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB
version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used >>pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11
programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up
and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in
c now.

I use for example C on my PCs and the Raspberry Pis I have.
C is yery portable, libraries and open source applications everywhere.
gcc is a nice compiler that supports many architectures.
Stuff I wrote for the PC in C comp[iles and runs on the Raspberries...
This Usenet newsreader I use now I wrote in the late nineties when moving to Linux
as there was no Free Agent for Linux...
Still using it, now posting from a Pi4 8 GB.
It uses linked lists, I have a database of Usenet postings going back to these days.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
There are some compatibility issues, but that is because the graphics library I use
had some changes, but can work around it.
More C code:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
There is a simple 8052 assembler written in C on that webpage too.
And a z80 dissasembler .
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/index.html
etc etc
My website is basic html.

The guy who wrote the PDP-11 assembler said that it was really a
language processor. We built several cross-assemblers as macros within
the PDP-11 assembler, including the 6800, 6802, 6803, and 68332
processors.

Amazingly, Digikey will still sell you a 68332.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:f1kcij51cie8n6c2qdq9fdj7dbm2alsuev@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 12:00:36 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:p5ecij1jf5a4in5mnmelkdfrovelr0esko@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way. >>>>>>
Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

Ah lex and yacc.
Well if you're going to use any kind of compiler/interpreter, someone has to write it.

Does LTSpice originate from designers wanting to play with simulation because putting real parts together isn't interesting?

It's slow and expensive to make ICs, so it makes sense to simulate
first. The ICE in SPICE means "integrated circuit emphasis."

There can't be anyone here who doesn't already know that or who hasn't seen that video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6TrbD7-IwU

That's brilliant, cultivating your intuition. But I disagree about
using Spice to design real products: it works.

Managers tend to like simulation because you don't have to get your hands dirty.
At least not until the design which worked fine in simulation either doesn't work at all or has some unexpected issue in reality.

I can run a sim that steps through hundreds or thousands of cases, and
run it over a weekend. A silimar set of breadboard tests might take
months of hands-on bench work.

I'm not suggesting you should breadboard everything, that's simply not possible.

And I was never good at nonlinear control theory. Nobody is.

I do breadboard to test parts whose models can't be trusted or when
models are unavailable, but we seldom breadboard complex circuits and
never breadboard actual products.

I know of one giant organization that defines six iterations of a
design, and uses at least that many. It takes them years to finish
anything.

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On 11/2/24 15:44, john larkin wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

Like YASP? Quite useful, in fact.

Jeroen Belleman

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 17:20:39 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 5:05 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

I think that the complexity ratio between C and C++ well exceeds ten.

Possibly. But, the cognitive load is roughly an order of magnitude.
If the developer can't "grok" (in the most literal sense of the word)
what's going on, what hope has he?

Most certainly. I first measured the complexity of computer languages
in the says when Ada83 first emerged in the mid 1980s, long before the object-oriented stuff emerged. The competition was K&R C.

People knew that Ada was far more complicated than C, but exactly how
can one quantify such a slippery thing as "complexity" (whatever that
means)?

In those days, we used DEC VAX/VMS computers, and DEC had
well-regarded compilers for both C and Ada83, so I measured the total
file footprint in bytes on the disk of the two compilers (and their
libraries), and Ada83 was ten times the size of the C compiler.

Now this Ada83 compiler was unable to do anything except pass the
formal acceptance test for Ada83 compilers, while the C compiler was
in wide use, so the true ratio had to exceed ten when the Ada compiler
matured.

C++ was emerging around then, and the Ada community was forced to
respond - their answer was Ada95. One assumes that it is a factor
larger and more complex than Ada83, and that it too grew as it
matured.

You are probably able to weigh the various compilers, allowing us to
quantify the offerings of today.

It took a while for compilers to handle mutual-exclusion
functions/commands correctly - in most architectures, one must block
interrupts for this to work correctly. It's a long story, and is a
good reason to work in assembly for that.

With modern processors, there are considerably more pitfalls than that.
Most "programmers" haven't a clue as to what a "barrier" is nor when
(or why!) to use them.

These programmers would likely hurt themselves if allowed to use a hex calculator without close supervision. So better find better
programmers.

And, as hardware has become more featureful, the needs for talking
to the iron UNAMBIGUOUSLY are increasing, constantly. Open door
for obscure, intermittent bugs...

Sounds like a good argument for running machine code right on the iron
- no annoying obscuring layers.

Joe Gwinn

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On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 12:00:36 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:p5ecij1jf5a4in5mnmelkdfrovelr0esko@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

Ah lex and yacc.
Well if you're going to use any kind of compiler/interpreter, someone has to write it.

Does LTSpice originate from designers wanting to play with simulation because putting real parts together isn't interesting?

It's slow and expensive to make ICs, so it makes sense to simulate
first. The ICE in SPICE means "integrated circuit emphasis."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6TrbD7-IwU

That's brilliant, cultivating your intuition. But I disagree about
using Spice to design real products: it works.

Managers tend to like simulation because you don't have to get your hands dirty.
At least not until the design which worked fine in simulation either doesn't work at all or has some unexpected issue in reality.

I can run a sim that steps through hundreds or thousands of cases, and
run it over a weekend. A silimar set of breadboard tests might take
months of hands-on bench work.

And I was never good at nonlinear control theory. Nobody is.

I do breadboard to test parts whose models can't be trusted or when
models are unavailable, but we seldom breadboard complex circuits and
never breadboard actual products.

I know of one giant organization that defines six iterations of a
design, and uses at least that many. It takes them years to finish
anything.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 11/2/24 15:44, john larkin wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Most computing languages originate from programmers wanting to play
with programming because solving real-world problems - the things we
pay them to do - isn't interesting.

In academia, they need toys and things to argue about so they keep
inventing languages. It's like economists who can't say "let the
market work, and econ 101 is all anybody needs."

I sat in on one cs class where new languages weren't enough fun, so
the prof lectured about compiler compilers, a whole new layer of
abstraction.

Sorry, that should be YACC, not YASP.

Jeroen Belleman (who has seen too many software tools starting
with 'YA'.)

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"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

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On 01/11/2024 23:54, john larkin wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 16:03:00 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

We want to time the execution of a control algorithm. One way to time
it is to run it in a loop maybe 100K times and measure that with a
stopwatch. But a very smart compiler might run it once, notice that
nothing has changed, and skip the reruns.

Most compilers these days are smart enough to move loop invariants
outside of a loop and then dispose of the loop. You must have side
effects in any code that you want to benchmark. Optimisers can be
*really* smart about rearranging code for maximum performance by
avoiding pipeline stalls. Only the very best humans can match them now.

Every now and then you stumble upon a construct that on certain
platforms is unreasonably fast (2x or 4x). Increasingly because it has vectorised a loop on the fly when all go faster stripes are enabled.

Precision timers and benchmarking tools are available on most platforms
no need to use a stop watch unless you enjoy watching paint dry.

It's best to bang a port pin and measure it with an oscilloscope.

We've had FPGA compilers do that sort of thing, optimize out
intentional delays. One fix is to XOR signals with a level from a pin
that *we* know is always low.

If the compiler can see that is true you could still get caught out.

--
Martin Brown

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On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 18:01:40 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 01/11/2024 23:54, john larkin wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 16:03:00 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 3:50 PM, Nick Hayward wrote:

What about C++?

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

We want to time the execution of a control algorithm. One way to time
it is to run it in a loop maybe 100K times and measure that with a
stopwatch. But a very smart compiler might run it once, notice that
nothing has changed, and skip the reruns.

Most compilers these days are smart enough to move loop invariants
outside of a loop and then dispose of the loop. You must have side
effects in any code that you want to benchmark. Optimisers can be
*really* smart about rearranging code for maximum performance by
avoiding pipeline stalls. Only the very best humans can match them now.

Every now and then you stumble upon a construct that on certain
platforms is unreasonably fast (2x or 4x). Increasingly because it has >vectorised a loop on the fly when all go faster stripes are enabled.

Precision timers and benchmarking tools are available on most platforms
no need to use a stop watch unless you enjoy watching paint dry.

I can really trust a stopwatch or an oscilloscope. 5 seconds spent
measuring a loop time won't ruin my day.

It's best to bang a port pin and measure it with an oscilloscope.

We've had FPGA compilers do that sort of thing, optimize out
intentional delays. One fix is to XOR signals with a level from a pin
that *we* know is always low.

If the compiler can see that is true you could still get caught out.

The compiler can't know if I have grounded a pin.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:55:02 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:46:50 +0000) it happened Cursitor Doom ><cd@notformail.com> wrote in <beecij9b6q9s1tccqch6a9hhnege4h5507@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.
but fun for simple math...
No floating point shit when doing asm .
most human relevant things can be done in 32 bit integer.

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80
It ran BASIC, a good BASIC.
Then I converted it to a CP/M machine, running the C80 C compiler.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/index.html
Added all sortd of I/O:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/system14/diagrams/index.html

At work I was using the first IBM PCs..
designing ISA cards with all sort of things on it, like vector stuff, >>>process control, what not.
My CP/M running Z81 (by then) was faster than the IBM due to the RAMDISK I build.

Still using C now at home and Micochip PIC asm...
No bloat today

About 30 years ago, I bought a C compiler from Microsoft. It came in a >>foot-cube box with thumping great manuals and umpteen discs. What a
pile of shit that turned out to be. It was *riddled* with bugs and the >>Microsoft 'support' people were as dense as pig shit and didn't seem
to know a thing about the product. But that didn't stop them keeping
me tied up on the line racking up charges while they came up with ever
more ingenious tactics of trying to cover up how vacuous they really
were on the subject. I subsequently migrated to Borland and life got a
hell of a lot better, thankfully.

C/80 (for Z80) was a nice C compiler
In 1998 I bought a computer magazine at the train station and it came with a CD with SLS Linux
That distro had, among other things, gcc as C compiler.
Moved to Linux right away and been using gcc ever since.
I alaready had a book on Unix, so it took just a few hours to get working in linux.
The Unix book I had bought because years earlier I worked a while at a big linear accelerator where they used those PDP things that
ran Unix.

For work I have had to work with Microsoft stuff and C++ and what not, what a mess.
These days you can just ask AI to write the code for you?

You certainly can and many people have. Quite how good the code is
another matter, though. I have no info on that aspect but would
welcome any others may have.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: >https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been
simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:08:36 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin >><JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>>>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math >>>signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB
version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used >>>pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11
programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up >>>and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in
c now.

I use for example C on my PCs and the Raspberry Pis I have.
C is yery portable, libraries and open source applications everywhere.
gcc is a nice compiler that supports many architectures.
Stuff I wrote for the PC in C comp[iles and runs on the Raspberries...
This Usenet newsreader I use now I wrote in the late nineties when moving to Linux
as there was no Free Agent for Linux...
Still using it, now posting from a Pi4 8 GB.
It uses linked lists, I have a database of Usenet postings going back to these days.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
There are some compatibility issues, but that is because the graphics library I use
had some changes, but can work around it.
More C code:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
There is a simple 8052 assembler written in C on that webpage too.
And a z80 dissasembler .
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/index.html
etc etc
My website is basic html.

The guy who wrote the PDP-11 assembler said that it was really a
language processor. We built several cross-assemblers as macros within
the PDP-11 assembler, including the 6800, 6802, 6803, and 68332
processors.

Steve Gibson of grc.com is heavily into PDP-8s and his site has a good selection of info on 'em if anyone's interested.

Amazingly, Digikey will still sell you a 68332.

Price?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: >>https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >>This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/2/2024 11:01 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Most compilers these days are smart enough to move loop invariants outside of a
loop and then dispose of the loop. You must have side effects in any code that
you want to benchmark. Optimisers can be *really* smart about rearranging code
for maximum performance by avoiding pipeline stalls. Only the very best humans
can match them now.

You need a few more asterisks stressing "really"! What's most amusing
is how the folks who write "clever"/obscure code fragments THINKING they
are "optimizing" it just annoy the compiler. On any substantial piece
of code, "you" simply can't outperform it. Your mind gets tired. You
make mistakes. The compiler just plows ahead. EVERY TIME IT IS INVOKED!

Every now and then you stumble upon a construct that on certain platforms is unreasonably fast (2x or 4x). Increasingly because it has vectorised a loop on
the fly when all go faster stripes are enabled.

A developer /aware of the platform on which the code will execute/ can often design a better *algorithm* to beat the compiler's optimizations of a poorer algorithm.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how my data is structured to exploit features present in the hardware. E.g., a traditional mind would group
all of a task's state into a single struct. But, that will almost certainly span a couple of cache lines.

So, when looking at scheduling decisions, the *processor* will be flitting around between many cache lines -- examining *a* piece of data in each.
So, more trips to memory to fill those other cache lines just to examine
that one datum in each cache line "wasted" on it's fetch.

Instead, group the parameters from MANY tasks in such a way that the examination of the datum for the first task drags similar data into
that cache line for the *next* task's parameters; leverage the
effort already expended on THAT cache line instead of just (likely)
discarding it in favor of fetching another line.

So, instead of just knowing, e.g., when to use a particular type of
search or sort algorithm (based on a characterization of the data to
be searched/sorted), you think about the "hardware algorithm" that
your code is invoking to support whatever your hardware is doing.

Note how large caches have become on modern processors. And, the wasted opportunities they represent for multithreaded implementations ("Gee,
all of that data in the cache that I thought I could make use of is now
largely useless as the next task isn't likely to benefit from it!")

[Another argument affecting the choice of implementation languages;
locality of reference. Stack computers, anyone??]

Precision timers and benchmarking tools are available on most platforms no need
to use a stop watch unless you enjoy watching paint dry.

This is complicated if you have a interrupts that can nickel and
dime your execution time.

Benchmarking, in general, is fraught with perils for the naive.
Few truly understand the scope of their *select* "micro-optimizations".

In the 80's, there was an ongoing split in the Motogorilla vs. Inhell
camps over *system* designs. Folks would make arbitrary claims
(backed up with REAL data) to support why X was better than Y.

But, they rarely looked at the whole picture. And, a product *is*
"the whole picture".

"Yeah, its nice that one opcode fetch allows you to push/pull
*all* of the processor state (vs. having to fetch an instruction
to push/pop each individual item). But, your code is more than
just push/pull operations. If you are constantly going back to
memory to store the (temporary?) result of the last instruction,
then having internal state that can be used to eliminate that
memory access allows the *process* to run faster. 'Let's hold
memory DOLLARS constant and see how well things perform...'"

[Gee, this processor runs at 8MHz while this other runs at 2...
which is MORE PRODUCTIVE?]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 15:57:39 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: >>>https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >>>This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been
simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Indeed. And that's why it's really quite remarkable that this tiny
passive device enables the generation of such spectrally pure
sinewaves; an 'ancient' technology that still holds a candle in the
digital world of today.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/2/2024 10:10 AM, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

Sorry, that should be YACC, not YASP.

YACC is wonderful at eliminating the tedium from so many
annoying tasks associated with language design. But,
relies on folks being able to map their problems onto
grammars.

I built the interface to SWMBOs media player in YACC.
It's much more obvious how the "controls" interact
with the "program" than trying to embed all those
conditionals in a bunch of spaghetti code:

"Well, if the radio is playing and she presses
'1', how does that differ than if a 'CD' is
playing and she has pressed it? What if the
radio is playing and she presses REC? What if
a CD? Where is the code that handles that case..."

Jeroen Belleman (who has seen too many software tools starting
with 'YA'.)

That -- even if omitted in the name (e.g., ANTLR).

OTOH, looking at their capabilities often sheds light on
the sorts of "problems" other products have had.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/2/2024 9:54 AM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 17:20:39 -0700, Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid>
wrote:

On 11/1/2024 5:05 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:

C++ is an order of magnitude more complex than C. Even a
casual C programmer can imagine what his code will look
like after compilation. I.e., can imagine exactly what the
CPU will be doing (ignoring the fact that the compiler will
often out-think the coder in terms of time/space efficiency).

I think that the complexity ratio between C and C++ well exceeds ten.

Possibly. But, the cognitive load is roughly an order of magnitude.
If the developer can't "grok" (in the most literal sense of the word)
what's going on, what hope has he?

Most certainly. I first measured the complexity of computer languages
in the says when Ada83 first emerged in the mid 1980s, long before the object-oriented stuff emerged. The competition was K&R C.

People knew that Ada was far more complicated than C, but exactly how
can one quantify such a slippery thing as "complexity" (whatever that
means)?

In those days, we used DEC VAX/VMS computers, and DEC had
well-regarded compilers for both C and Ada83, so I measured the total
file footprint in bytes on the disk of the two compilers (and their libraries), and Ada83 was ten times the size of the C compiler.

Now this Ada83 compiler was unable to do anything except pass the
formal acceptance test for Ada83 compilers, while the C compiler was
in wide use, so the true ratio had to exceed ten when the Ada compiler matured.

C++ was emerging around then, and the Ada community was forced to
respond - their answer was Ada95. One assumes that it is a factor
larger and more complex than Ada83, and that it too grew as it
matured.

You are probably able to weigh the various compilers, allowing us to
quantify the offerings of today.

I'm not worried about the complexity of the compiler. Presumably,
"qualified" developers can throw resources at that ONE product,
allowing it to evolve in correctness and efficiency.

My attention is always on the developer. How "hard" is it for him
to wrap his head around the ideas that the language embraces?
E.g., object-based is a different mindset than procedural... but,
the mental step is a small one; you just think of nouns and verbs
instead of a sequential "actor's narrative".

[Object-oriented, OTOH, drags in many more issues -- polymorphism,
inheritance, etc.]

Ignoring *how* the compiler implements all of these things, it's
not a huge stretch to understand them conceptually. Constructors,
destructors, member functions, private data, etc. aren't really
that hard to understand.

LISP's lists are even simpler -- yet the step to embracing them
seems to be a lot bigger for most folks.

It took a while for compilers to handle mutual-exclusion
functions/commands correctly - in most architectures, one must block
interrupts for this to work correctly. It's a long story, and is a
good reason to work in assembly for that.

With modern processors, there are considerably more pitfalls than that.
Most "programmers" haven't a clue as to what a "barrier" is nor when
(or why!) to use them.

These programmers would likely hurt themselves if allowed to use a hex calculator without close supervision. So better find better
programmers.

The hardware's evolution is making things like the single-threaded
vs. multi-threaded mindset adjustment look trivial. You'll see
more folks relying on black box products from third parties on
which to develop their products -- good luck getting THOSE
defined and debugged! Like having one big hardware component
in the middle of your design with lots of pins, a many thousand
page datasheet -- but lots of missing or simply "typ" specifications
in the parameterization.

And, as hardware has become more featureful, the needs for talking
to the iron UNAMBIGUOUSLY are increasing, constantly. Open door
for obscure, intermittent bugs...

Sounds like a good argument for running machine code right on the iron
- no annoying obscuring layers.

Ah, but the iron is NOW the problem! Out-of-order execution, speculative execution, i&d caches, multiple cores, *real* MMUs, TLBs, etc. The days
when you could hack together a "simple" RTOS in a few weekends are past
(for all but the simpler machines) and predict performance "on paper".

Now, there is considerably more machine state in play that affects
that calculus: is the cache warm? cold? How many lines do
you evict before opting to flush the whole thing? When for a TLB
shootdown vs. expecting the other core(s) to purge theirs? How
*long* will my core have to wait for the other cores to get back
into sync? (how do I know *what* they have cached while I've
been busy?)

You will be forced to *rely* on "abstraction layers" because
you won't be stuck with "mere mortals" developing your code!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:k85dijlrcq38er2i5klcru0vuppakheurl@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 15:57:39 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else
came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to
be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated
to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not
brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: >>>>https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >>>>This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been
simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it
naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a
square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Indeed. And that's why it's really quite remarkable that this tiny
passive device enables the generation of such spectrally pure
sinewaves; an 'ancient' technology that still holds a candle in the
digital world of today.

I can't say I've read much on "ancient technology" since my early teen years. WH Smiths was full of literature such as "the unexplained" at the time.

These days it's even harder to filter nonsense from useful information but this page seems reasonable:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm

Particularly where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 17:38:19 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:k85dijlrcq38er2i5klcru0vuppakheurl@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 15:57:39 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else
came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to
be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated
to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not
brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: >>>>>https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice.
This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been >>>> simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it
naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a
square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Indeed. And that's why it's really quite remarkable that this tiny
passive device enables the generation of such spectrally pure
sinewaves; an 'ancient' technology that still holds a candle in the
digital world of today.

I can't say I've read much on "ancient technology" since my early teen years. >WH Smiths was full of literature such as "the unexplained" at the time.

These days it's even harder to filter nonsense from useful information but this page seems reasonable:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm

Particularly where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Yes, I already copied this link from your earlier post on the subject.
Many thanks indeed.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/2/24 15:48, Don Y wrote:

On 11/2/2024 11:01 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Most compilers these days are smart enough to move loop invariants
outside of a loop and then dispose of the loop. You must have side
effects in any code that you want to benchmark. Optimisers can be
*really* smart about rearranging code for maximum performance by
avoiding pipeline stalls. Only the very best humans can match them now.

You need a few more asterisks stressing "really"!  What's most amusing
is how the folks who write "clever"/obscure code fragments THINKING they
are "optimizing" it just annoy the compiler.  On any substantial piece
of code, "you" simply can't outperform it.  Your mind gets tired.  You
make mistakes.  The compiler just plows ahead.  EVERY TIME IT IS INVOKED!

Over a decade ago I hand optimized some vector code on the CELL
processor. I then compiled some C++ code doing the same operations in
nested loops with vector optimization turned on. The compiler was faster
by a cycle when they found a load that could be done in parallel that I
had missed.

I didn't bother doing assembler code after that.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 11/2/2024 3:27 PM, Dennis wrote:

On 11/2/24 15:48, Don Y wrote:

On 11/2/2024 11:01 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

Most compilers these days are smart enough to move loop invariants outside >>> of a loop and then dispose of the loop. You must have side effects in any >>> code that you want to benchmark. Optimisers can be *really* smart about
rearranging code for maximum performance by avoiding pipeline stalls. Only >>> the very best humans can match them now.

You need a few more asterisks stressing "really"!  What's most amusing
is how the folks who write "clever"/obscure code fragments THINKING they
are "optimizing" it just annoy the compiler.  On any substantial piece
of code, "you" simply can't outperform it.  Your mind gets tired.  You
make mistakes.  The compiler just plows ahead.  EVERY TIME IT IS INVOKED! >>

Over a decade ago I hand optimized some vector code on the CELL processor. I then compiled some C++ code doing the same operations in nested loops with vector optimization turned on. The compiler was faster by a cycle when they found a load that could be done in parallel that I had missed.

I didn't bother doing assembler code after that.

A (good) compiler is like having an extra person on your team to
"sweat the details". And, "he" works for very low pay! :>

[I am always amused when folks bitch about the costs of tools:
"Really? And how many of your PAID hours does that tool's cost
translate to?"]

The biggest advantage is that it frees you to "write what you want
to do" instead of having to worry about finding the "fastest"
(smallest?) way of doing it. If you can concentrate on clearly
expressing the algorithm that you want to implement, it also
helps The Next Guy who may not perceive all of the subtleties
in your "cryptic" implementation.

[The Reading Machine had a 16 word (!) boot PROM. If you looked
at the code (just 16 instructions), you were left asking lots of
questions like "Why is the program image being loaded at 014623
and not something 'nicer'?" Ans: because 014632 is the code for
one of the 16 instructions that are going to be executed so why
waste one of those 16 locations in the PROM to store some "nicer"
address?? Does the code really care what address it loads at?!]

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 4:07 am, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here: https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

Yes. You can add a trace to a display which you define as an algebraic
function of other traces. If you know what the offset is in volts (or
amps for current traces) you can put that into the expression as a constant.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 6:21 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours.

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >> This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Of course it is.That's why Wein bridges need a non-linear element that
can be adjust to get the gain exactly right and keep it there.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

There is but Cursitor Doom doesn't know it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 8:12 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 15:57:39 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice.
This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been
simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Indeed. And that's why it's really quite remarkable that this tiny
passive device enables the generation of such spectrally pure
sinewaves; an 'ancient' technology that still holds a candle in the
digital world of today.

They can generate tolerably spectrally pure sine waves if engineered in
with sufficient expertise, which is pretty thin on the ground.

It's not an area where digital technology has a lot to offer. Today's
word isn't exactly digital either - every system has a analog front end.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

And Cursitor Doom hasn't a clue about that.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 15:58:25 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 8:12 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 15:57:39 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd@notformail.com> wrote in message news:ahucij5dt50fihbuenl766e80isr227gqa@4ax.com...

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the
rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting
back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came
up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as
has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could
get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice.
This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen
at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been >>>> simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Well it's all exactly what you would expect because as was previously pointed out, a gain of 1.0000000001 (with as many 0s as you
want) will grow to limiting but a gain of 0.99999999999 (with as many 9s as you want) will die to nothing. So in any real circuit
you must constantly control the gain so that never goes into limiting and never dies. Yes this will usually be a knife-edge thing.

If you try to do this manually then the slightest change in anything (supply voltage, temperature, humidity, wind direction,
Halloween) will tip it one way or another.

Pure sine waves are surprisingly difficult to generate for this reason. Real analogue hardware just doesn't want to do it naturally
(unless the frequency is so high that the next harmonic is barely noticed or easy to filter). It would much rather produce a square
(limited) wave or nothing at all.

Indeed. And that's why it's really quite remarkable that this tiny
passive device enables the generation of such spectrally pure
sinewaves; an 'ancient' technology that still holds a candle in the
digital world of today.

They can generate tolerably spectrally pure sine waves if engineered in
with sufficient expertise, which is pretty thin on the ground.

It's not an area where digital technology has a lot to offer. Today's
word isn't exactly digital either - every system has a analog front end

Even SDR?

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

And Cursitor Doom hasn't a clue about that.

True enough, Bill. I've not yet encountered capacitors.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre
world-view, Bill.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:27:26 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 6:21 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Having just got back from a vacation I thought I'd give my input to this before looking into whether it's worthwhile getting back
into sinewave oscillators.

John May has come up with a much better sine wave oscillator than yours. >>>

That's no surprise. I can remember one or two other occasions when I thought I had a brilliant way to do it but someone else came up
with a better way.
I don't specifically mean sinewave oscillators.

It also has more components, and I'm not sure that all of them are strictly necessary. Getting deep enough into the design to be
sure where the harmonics are coming from is going to be difficult. I think I'm getting there, but I'm not all that motivated to
put in the rest of the
work.

One obvious point is that a FET channel isn't a perfect resistor - as the voltage across it rises above zero it starts looking
more like a constant current diode (and you can buy FET-based constant current diodes).

In theory, if you added a second harmonic component to the FET gate drive you could make it look like a resistor over a wider
range of voltage, if the phasing was close enough to right.

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice. >>> This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.
You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.
So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

Hi Edward,
I've been messing around with a real-life WB oscillator - the busted
one I originally posted about. AFAIK, everyone else here has just been
simming them, so I thought it might be useful if I provided some
detail that others may have overlooked.
The thing that stands out in my experiments in replacing the broken
thermistor with a pot and attempting to twiddle for the optimum sine
wave is just how close the waveform has to get to collapsing from
insufficient feedback in order to get a nice sine wave. It's a
knife-edge adjustment to get it right and then of course, with
constantly shifting temperatures it goes out of adjustment again
within a few seconds. But the sweet spot for the best waveshape is
*just* a whisker above collapse.
HTH.

Of course it is.That's why Wein bridges need a non-linear element that
can be adjust to get the gain exactly right and keep it there.

Not necessarily. You could have a linear component set up in such a
way that it performs non-linearly.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

There is but Cursitor Doom doesn't know it.

Yeah, still haven't heard of capacitors.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 7:56 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:27:26 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 6:21 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

<snip>

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice.

This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.

John May made the point that in LTSpice trapezium integration (as
opposed to modified trapezium integration) give less distortion in the simulated waveform. Numerical integration is a good way of accumulating rounding error, and shorter words mean more rounding error.

You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.

Closed loop feedback takes a while to settle. If you known what you are
doing you can mostly make the settling dead-beat, but sometimes this
costs you more performance that you can afford.

So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

<snipped Cursitor Doom being an ass>

Of course it is.That's why Wein bridges need a non-linear element that
can be adjust to get the gain exactly right and keep it there.

Not necessarily. You could have a linear component set up in such a
way that it performs non-linearly.

Then it stops being a linear component.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

There is but Cursitor Doom doesn't know it.

Yeah, still haven't heard of capacitors.

Non sequitur. The simulation program involved - LTSpice - does
accommodate capacitors, but you don't need to add them to the circuit
being simulated to do what Edward Rawde was asking for.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 7:59 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way. >>>>>>
Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre
world-view, Bill.

Cursitor Doom likes his world views thoroughly bizarre, if not downright absurd. One of the more bizarre aspects of this behavior is his delusion
that he can pose as the voice of reason, and not get jeered at for his
lunatic pretensions.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 20:53:19 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 7:56 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:27:26 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 6:21 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

<snip>

You've also got the point that when there's a voltage drop across the FET channel, it adds to the gate-to-channel voltage (as has
been mentioned here) and you can cancel that with an in-phase fundamental component

The last circuit of my own had both an n fet and a p fet.
I found that by adding a capacitor from one gate to the other (to try to cancel the unwanted signals in opposite phase) I could get
the unwanted gate signal below 100uV. I then had harmonics approaching 60dB down except one at 50dB (I think 2KHz). Not brilliant
but not bad.

There are some useful pointers here:
https://sound-au.com/articles/sinewave.htm
In particular where it says "Done properly, a JFET can provide distortion performance that is as good or better than a lamp or
thermistor."

Perhaps I'll concentrate on how to make the FET behave as a voltage variable resistor over the widest possible range.

I also what to look into what I meant by crud and non crud mode in LTSpice.

This mysterious effect can depend on things such as which specific computer is used and how long is specified before collecting
simulation data.

John May made the point that in LTSpice trapezium integration (as
opposed to modified trapezium integration) give less distortion in the >simulated waveform. Numerical integration is a good way of accumulating >rounding error, and shorter words mean more rounding error.

You can see it in the gate voltage after startup. It looks a bit like a PLL hunting and eventually locking but it doesn't happen at
startup, it happens after seconds.

Closed loop feedback takes a while to settle. If you known what you are
doing you can mostly make the settling dead-beat, but sometimes this
costs you more performance that you can afford.

So I'll need to be able to post some pictures to show that. I'll get to that.

<snipped Cursitor Doom being an ass>

Of course it is.That's why Wein bridges need a non-linear element that
can be adjust to get the gain exactly right and keep it there.

Not necessarily. You could have a linear component set up in such a
way that it performs non-linearly.

Then it stops being a linear component.

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

There is but Cursitor Doom doesn't know it.

Yeah, still haven't heard of capacitors.

Non sequitur. The simulation program involved - LTSpice - does
accommodate capacitors, but you don't need to add them to the circuit
being simulated to do what Edward Rawde was asking for.

The fact is that a 1fF cap would have had the desired effect without compromising the circuit's performance. Why do you feel the need to
complicate everything? Oh yes, to show us all how clever you are....

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 11:47 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 20:53:19 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 7:56 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:27:26 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 3/11/2024 6:21 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 13:07:32 -0400, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"Bill Sloman" <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote in message news:vg4fff$3lok1$1@dont-email.me...

On 2/11/2024 12:01 pm, Edward Rawde wrote:

"Cursitor Doom" <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in message news:vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me...

<snip>

Is there an easy way to remove a DC offset from a simulation trace so that my n and p gate signals can be superimposed after
startup?

There is but Cursitor Doom doesn't know it.

Yeah, still haven't heard of capacitors.

Non sequitur. The simulation program involved - LTSpice - does
accommodate capacitors, but you don't need to add them to the circuit
being simulated to do what Edward Rawde was asking for.

The fact is that a 1fF cap would have had the desired effect without compromising the circuit's performance. Why do you feel the need to complicate everything? Oh yes, to show us all how clever you are....

Edward Rawde wasn't asking how to stabilise the voltage difference. He
was asking how to display the small short term variations in voltages
on the screen in the presence of a large voltage difference - the
P-channel and N-channel FETs in question were operating with their gates
a couple of volts above and below ground respectively and he wanted to
see the mV difference in gate voltages through a single cycle of the
sine wave.

Knowing what's actually going does lead people to tell more complicated
and realistic stories than those dreamt up by fantasising twits like you.

Realistic stories tend to be quite a bit more useful, but you wouldn't
know about that.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Il 01/11/2024 19:04, Cursitor Doom ha scritto:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the rest; I'll stick with that.

Talking about structural "elegance" in my opinion (Common) LISP is one
of the best. Data, structures, functions, even programs... everything is
only atoms and lists.

--

maitre Aliboron

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>>element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns
to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way. >>>>>>
Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre
world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord >>>>> and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>>>element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed. >>>

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns
to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 11/3/2024 8:30 AM, maitre Aliboron wrote:

Talking about structural "elegance" in my opinion (Common) LISP is one of the best. Data, structures, functions, even programs... everything is only atoms and lists.

Yes, but it is VERY hard for people to wrap their heads around.
Sort of like parsing a binary file -- there are no real
"identifying features" from which to get your bearings.

Lists are a great addition to a language but almost always
drag in the need for GC.

Folks often implement lists in other languages -- but, usually by
tainting the data type that is being listed. E.g., adding a
"next (previous)" element(s) to a struct seems "free". But,
implicitly changes the data type of the listed item.

E.g., how would you make a list of floats?
{ theFloat, *theNextFloat } is no longer a "float" but some
bastard data type. Adding a float to said list would mean
converting it to one of these bastards *before* prepending it.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord >>>>>> and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>>>>element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed. >>>>

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns
to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>>> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord >>>>>>> and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>>>>>element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed. >>>>>

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns
to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 4/11/2024 4:24 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>: >>>>>

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep >>>>>>>> the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later versions just get in the way. >>>>>>>
Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed - >>> element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed. >>

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre
world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

John Larkin is a narcissist, and that has to be read as saying that I
think I know more that John Larkin (and I sometimes do) and he feels
insulted when this made obvious.

That's really sad.

Narcissists have a lot to be sad about. Look at Donald Trump.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>> wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>>>> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord >>>>>>>> and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre
world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>> so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The
condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns
to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 15:05:51 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>>> wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>>>>> wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord >>>>>>>>> and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>>> world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>>> so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>>> condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns >>>>> to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away
every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is?
That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

That's a bit rich coming from you, Bill. You're so far up yours you
could check your own prostate.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/11/2024 6:30 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:08:36 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin >>> <JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>> more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>>> rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math
signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB
version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used >>>> pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11
programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up >>>> and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in >>>> c now.

I use for example C on my PCs and the Raspberry Pis I have.
C is yery portable, libraries and open source applications everywhere.
gcc is a nice compiler that supports many architectures.
Stuff I wrote for the PC in C comp[iles and runs on the Raspberries...
This Usenet newsreader I use now I wrote in the late nineties when moving to Linux
as there was no Free Agent for Linux...
Still using it, now posting from a Pi4 8 GB.
It uses linked lists, I have a database of Usenet postings going back to these days.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
There are some compatibility issues, but that is because the graphics library I use
had some changes, but can work around it.
More C code:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
There is a simple 8052 assembler written in C on that webpage too.
And a z80 dissasembler .
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/index.html
etc etc
My website is basic html.

The guy who wrote the PDP-11 assembler said that it was really a
language processor. We built several cross-assemblers as macros within
the PDP-11 assembler, including the 6800, 6802, 6803, and 68332
processors.

Steve Gibson of grc.com is heavily into PDP-8s and his site has a good selection of info on 'em if anyone's interested.

Amazingly, Digikey will still sell you a 68332.

Price?

You could go to the Digikey website and look it up for yourself. Digikey Australia doesn't seem to stock it.

Digikey in America lists an NXP part with a similar part number, but
shows it as "no longer in production".

John Larkin may be able to do better, but he didn't post a URL.

Maybe he was relying on his memory of previous purchases. Not wise at
his age.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 4/11/2024 9:18 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 15:05:51 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote: >>>>>>

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>>>> wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>>>> world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>>>> so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>>>> condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns >>>>>> to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away >>>>>> every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is? >>>>>> That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Like John Larkin, Cursitor Doom does generalise from his own experience. Cursitor Doom is particularly fond of thoroughly fatuous misinformation,
and I do label his more risible offerings that way.

I don't believe I have ever labelled even John Larkin's misinformation
that way. He does post a lot of nonsense, but it's the kind of nonsense
that America spreads pretty widely. It's not nearly as flagrantly absurd
as the stuff you collect from the particularly lunatic extremes of the far-right.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

That's a bit rich coming from you, Bill. You're so far up yours you
could check your own prostate.

Your grasp of reality really does leave a lot to be desired.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 19:30:52 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:08:36 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin >>><JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor >>>>>Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a >>>>>>more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep the >>>>>>rest; I'll stick with that.

Agree, I use C only and asm when needed.
I started with binary interfacing hardware...
Nothing of all of that was hard.

BASIC was fun too, but very limiting, slow interpreted language.

PowerBasic is a fabulous compiler. We did one contest, an array math >>>>signal processing thing. I wrote it in PB, another guy in c. Mine ran
4 times as fast. He played with the code and compiler optimiztions
for a couple of days and got it up to about 60% as fast as my PB >>>>version.

I used the obvious FOR loop with subscripts to scan the array. He used >>>>pointers.

c is really a PDP-11 assembler. In the early days of PDP-11 >>>>programming, everybody was fascinated with using pointers to wander up >>>>and down the world, and with pushing stuff onto the stack. It shows in >>>>c now.

I use for example C on my PCs and the Raspberry Pis I have.
C is yery portable, libraries and open source applications everywhere. >>>gcc is a nice compiler that supports many architectures.
Stuff I wrote for the PC in C comp[iles and runs on the Raspberries... >>>This Usenet newsreader I use now I wrote in the late nineties when moving to Linux
as there was no Free Agent for Linux...
Still using it, now posting from a Pi4 8 GB.
It uses linked lists, I have a database of Usenet postings going back to these days.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/index.html
There are some compatibility issues, but that is because the graphics library I use
had some changes, but can work around it.
More C code:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
There is a simple 8052 assembler written in C on that webpage too.
And a z80 dissasembler .
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/z80/index.html
etc etc
My website is basic html.

The guy who wrote the PDP-11 assembler said that it was really a
language processor. We built several cross-assemblers as macros within
the PDP-11 assembler, including the 6800, 6802, 6803, and 68332
processors.

Steve Gibson of grc.com is heavily into PDP-8s and his site has a good >selection of info on 'em if anyone's interested.

The 8 was a klunky machine, 12 bit, page addressed, one accumulator,
no stack. HP and Data General followed up with 16-bit versions,
equally klunky, but the PDP-11 was a much better architecture. It was apparently designed one night in one beer session, with Rick Merrill
(the inventor of Focal) having a lot of influence.

Amazingly, Digikey will still sell you a 68332.

Price?

See Digikey!

They show various MC68332 parts from about $20 to $50. Being Digikey,
they only stock the most expensive ones.

We will need to redesign a bunch of older products as parts go EOL,
but the 68332 has outlived about 5 generations of various ARM chips
already.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:fnthij9gl2g19bijc4jsm8fb7vuhe1keht@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 19:30:52 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:08:36 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin >>>><JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>

...

We will need to redesign a bunch of older products as parts go EOL,
but the 68332 has outlived about 5 generations of various ARM chips
already.

Haven't used one for 25 years and yes I bet plenty of people will be panicking over what to do when they're no longer available
because the original designers will be long since gone.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 10:18:33 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 15:05:51 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote: >>>>>>

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>>>> wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>>>> world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>>>> so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>>>> condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns >>>>>> to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away >>>>>> every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is? >>>>>> That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

That's a bit rich coming from you, Bill. You're so far up yours you
could check your own prostate.

Doom, please be a little civilized. Sloman is delighted to make a foul
fool of you.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 11:50:38 -0500, "Edward Rawde"
<invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"john larkin" <JL@gct.com> wrote in message news:fnthij9gl2g19bijc4jsm8fb7vuhe1keht@4ax.com...

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 19:30:52 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:08:36 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:41:11 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:55:18 -0700) it happened john larkin >>>>><JL@gct.com> wrote in <dnecijt2s9um4l6a4qnq3j0ekto8fl955d@4ax.com>:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:42:19 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> >>>>>>wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 18:04:21 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vg3575$3bio0$1@dont-email.me>: >>>>>>>

...

We will need to redesign a bunch of older products as parts go EOL,
but the 68332 has outlived about 5 generations of various ARM chips
already.

Haven't used one for 25 years and yes I bet plenty of people will be panicking over what to do when they're no longer available
because the original designers will be long since gone.

I'll be rich, then. I've got hundreds of them. :)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:57:04 -0800, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 10:18:33 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 15:05:51 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>wrote:

On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote: >>>>>>>

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> >>>>>>>>> wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>>

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>>>>> world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid >>>>>>>> so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>>>>> condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns >>>>>>> to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away >>>>>>> every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is? >>>>>>> That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

That's a bit rich coming from you, Bill. You're so far up yours you
could check your own prostate.

Doom, please be a little civilized. Sloman is delighted to make a foul
fool of you.

Relax, John. I'm just having a bit of fun with Bill for some
much-needed Election light relief. I'll go back to ignoring him again
once they've announced Harris as the winner.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 5/11/2024 10:05 am, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 09:57:04 -0800, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 10:18:33 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 15:05:51 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 4/11/2024 6:37 am, john larkin wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 18:49:03 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 10:17:24 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote: >>>>>>

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:37:43 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 09:24:39 -0800, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>

On Sun, 03 Nov 2024 08:59:36 +0000, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> >>>>>>>>> wrote:

On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 13:13:12 +1100, Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
wrote:

On 2/11/2024 11:40 pm, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:44:28 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Fri, 1 Nov 2024 22:50:41 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Nick Hayward
<nhayward8990@protonmail.com> wrote in <vg3m01$3e15j$2@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 1 Nov 2024 19:57:21 +0100, Jeroen Belleman wrote: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

On 11/1/24 19:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:

You can call me old fashioned, but I still believe there's never been a
more elegant computer language than the original K&R C. You can keep
the rest; I'll stick with that.

Agreed! All the hand-holding of later ve

rsions just get in the way.

Jeroen Belleman

What about C++?

It is a crime against humanity!!!

Then we're all agreed: C++ is an abomination in the sight of the Lord
and the invention of the Devil himself.

Jan Panteltje and Cursitor Doom are a very small - and poorly informed -
element of our community.

That they both agree is evidence that the proposition is probably flawed.

Or - more likely - that it doesn't conform to your rather bizarre >>>>>>>>>> world-view, Bill.

His world view is that he knows everything and everyone else is stupid
so deserves insults.

That's really sad.

I had to laugh out loud when I read that because it's *so* true. The >>>>>>>> condescension in particular is off the scale. It's a wonder he deigns >>>>>>>> to talk to anyone at all! But his limited vocabulary gives him away >>>>>>>> every time. Have you noticed how fond of the word 'fatuous' he is? >>>>>>>> That's his go-to insult for just about everything.

Best to ignore him.

Absolutely. And I shall do once again when the sham election is
finally over and Kamala Harris declared the winner.

Best to ignore her too.

Ignorance is bliss. Few people can be comfortable with their heads
jammed firmly up their own arseholes, but John Larkin and Cursitor
Doom do seem to manage it.

That's a bit rich coming from you, Bill. You're so far up yours you
could check your own prostate.

Doom, please be a little civilized. Sloman is delighted to make a foul
fool of you.

Relax, John. I'm just having a bit of fun with Bill for some
much-needed Election light relief. I'll go back to ignoring him again
once they've announced Harris as the winner.

Cursitor Doom's idea of fun is about as bizarre as the rest of his
menagerie of lunacies. And he does take pride in parading them.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)