User talk:Quarl/Archive 2006-04

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Quarl talk

WP:RFA/HereToHelp

Thank you for supporting my RfA. I’m proud to inform you that it passed with 75 support to 1 oppose to 2 neutral. I promise to make some great edits in the future (with edit summaries!) and use these powers to do all that I can to help. After all, that’s what I’m here for! (You didn’t think I could send a thank you note without a bad joke, could I?) --HereToHelp 13:00, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Userfying and speedy deletions

Hello. This is just a reminder to remove the speedy tags from the pages you userfy after you move them. Thanks. Pepsidrinka 04:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I must have missed some. —Quarl (talk) 2006-04-05 04:50Z

SD vs Prod

Not particularly bothered by an individual case, but was wondering why would it be worth changing from speedy to prod on an article that was clearly advertising and nothing else? Personally I would tend to use prod for more borderline cases (i.e. say when a lot of edits by various users have been made giving an indication a fair amount of people consider it a valid article) -- Sfnhltb 05:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't usually consider advertising by itself to be a reason to delete, much less speedy delete. Most advertising is for non-notable subjects, and I do consider lack of assertion of notability a reason to delete; A7 often applies. If it's possibly notable then I'd rather it be expanded without adcopy, or at least more eyes consider the notability before deleting. —Quarl (talk) 2006-04-05 06:10Z
I guess I look at it slightly differently for a couple of reasons, firstly I have seen a low volume wiki under attack from commercial spammers before for a matter of months and its fairly messy. Having blatant advertising around for several days where it might be boosting someones google rank (particularly if mirrors pick it up during that time) runs the risk of making wikipedia a major target for this sort of thing, even if we do have more users to deal with it, its something that could end up significantly hindering the project.
Lastly I don't draw much of a line between removing the entire of a spammed paragraph in an existing article and an equally valueless bunch of text that happened to be added as a new article. If someone came along and wanted to write an encyclopaedic article on some given commericial entity I doubt they are usually going to find the companys price lists or even sales blurb particularly useful as a starting point (well certainly not the very blatant stuff like todays) - the more borderline stuff I agree can be useful as a starting point and I have worked with it before without issue. -- Sfnhltb 07:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, we agree on the borderline cases. :) Deletion requires judgement; there are obvious deletes that don't fit in any CSD and articles that fit CSD but I don't think should be speedied. —Quarl (talk) 2006-04-05 07:11Z

Lars Hamilton

Not patent nonsense? Are you serious? Have you actually read the text? For example:

"Nine months pregnant, Guda-B [...] was skiing [...] Not realizing the severe consequences of skiing so late in her term, Guda met the slopes with intense spirit. But at the top of a triple black diamond, she began experiencing heavy contractions. She took off her skis and placed her poles aside. Her son purportedly popped right out and proceeded to use her skis to maneuver swiftly down the mountain with astonishing expertise."

jmd 06:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right; I didn't really read it before. I've deleted it now. —Quarl (talk) 2006-04-05 06:42Z

User:Quarl .js query

Quarl, do you know any reason using your .js file would break Lupin's tool? I was trying your stuff out, and it wasn't until I reverted a version without your javascript that my Lupin's Tool began working again. --maru (talk) contribs 01:39, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Hositt

Thanks so much for your editing of Hositt and merging of WikiHositt. We've extensively revised the article. If you had time to review it again, we'd be grateful. (Perhaps there's another protocol to request this that we ought to learn. I did just now remove the copy-edit header, which may be meant to flag it for others. Sorry. )

A KISS Rfa Thanks

Thank you, I've been promoted. pschemp | talk 01:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Neologisms

Hi there, a while ago you made an edit on the Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms guideline. I am proposing a revision to the guideline and I'm soliciting your comments. You can find the link to my rewrite at Wikipedia talk:Avoid neologisms -- cmh 01:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

ISO 8601 format

Pasted here for good measure:

Please read the documentation on ISO 8601. It explicitly requires that two digits be used for the month and the day. If two digits aren't used certain things will break (for instance, lexigraphical sorting will no longer produce chronological results). YYYY-M-D violates ISO 8601 standards and should never be used. It's a good thing it doesn't work with date preferences formatting. --Cyde Weys 03:38, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Bloatedness of ALGOL 68 comment in ALGOL Page

I noticed that you added: "This statement was in part a criticism of the bloatedness of ALGOL 68" to the Algol page.

I am trying to include a citation/source for this opinion, can you give me any good references? Was the source Edsger Dijkstra?

NevilleDNZ 23:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I've added the source of the original quote ("Hints on Programming Language Design") to the External links section, and clarified that the quote is indeed by Hoare and not Dijkstra. —Quarl (talk) 2006-04-24 18:59Z

ThanX for the external link, here is a machine text readable version of "Hints on Language Design": http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~mckeeman/cs118/references/hoarehints.ps

The word "bloated" does not actually appear in the text.

CAR Hoare didn't even mention Algol68 by name on the citation you mention. What CAR Hoare did apparently write in the same paper was:

Another replacement of simplicity as an objective has been orthogonality of design. An example of orthogonality is the provision of complex integers, on the argument that we need reals and integers and complex reals, so why not complex integers? In the early days of hardware design, some very ingenious but arbitrary features turned up in order codes as a result of orthogonal combinations of the function bits of an instruction, on the grounds that some clever programmer would find a use for them, -- and some clever programmer always did. Hardware designers have now learned more sense; but language designers are clever programmers and have not.

The principles of modularity, or orthogonality, insofar as they contribute to overall simplicity, are an excellent means to an end; but as a substitute for simplicity they are very questionable. Since in practice they have proved to be a technically more difficult achievement than simplicity, it is foolish to adopt them as primary objectives.

Algol68's second "aim/principle" of design of ALGOL 68 was:
2. Orthogonal design, [1] Hence - for example - the number or reserved words in algol68 was 61 vs Algol60's 106.

If CAR Hoare was indeed talking about Algol68, then the above quote seems to suggest that Algol68 was terse, not bloated.

CAR Hoare also went on to say:

The more I ponder the principles of language design, and the techniques which put them into practice, the more is my amazement and admiration of ALGOL 60. Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

Again, he isn't saying any language is bloated, just not as good as Algol60. (Note CAR Hoare wrote the first Algol60 compiler, but somehow missed out on being full time editor on the Algol68 Report)

Here is a quote from "Principles of language design and evolution" by Bertrand Meyer about Algol68:

Another justification of the consistency principle is that with more than a few basic

ideas the language design becomes simply unmanageable. Language constructs have a way of interacting with each other which can drive the most careful designers crazy. This is why the idea of orthogonality, popularized by Algol 68, does not live up to its promises: apparently unrelated aspects will produce strange combinations, which the language specification must cover explicitly.

Again, the point suggested is that Algol68 was seen as "too orthogonal", not "too bloated".

Another interesting point is that there was no time to bloat Algol68 before it was strangled. From "Draft Report" to "Final Report" was only 10 months as they had to meet a Dec 1968 deadline specifically imposed by Adriaan van Wijngaarden to stop it bloating.

I guess the rule of thumb why v2 of any language/software fails would be "because it became too bloated". Eg Java, VB, C#. It seems an obvious maxum. Maybe Algol68, is the exception that proves the rule!

One could say Algol68 is more like "distilled/orthogonal" C99, but Algol68 has OP-erator overloaded, stronger typing and the PAR-arallel clause. (And other weird stuff like the gomma got stripped after the 1st draft.)

So... please can I remove the bloated remark about Algol68? Maybe replace it with Cobol... a language universally know to be bloated, but - as measured by total lines of code in use - the most successful lauguage todate (maybe?). :-)

BTW: CAR Hoare[2] is still alive and very much kicking and on Microsoft's staff. Maybe we can contact him to get an official statement of whether Algol68 is bloated or not.

ThanX NevilleDNZ 04:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You can remove the remark if you wish. Yes, I'm aware that Tony Hoare is at MSR.—Quarl (talk) 2006-04-27 10:34Z

The transmogrification of Algol68 into the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

Dec 1968: Hoare: the language must be regarded as obsolete

  • From Algol Bulletin Dec 1968, AB3l.l
This forces upon us the conclusion that, regarded as a programming tool, the language must be regarded as obsolete.

Oct 1980: Hoare: long-gestated monster

"At last, in December 1968, in a mood of black depression, I attended the meeting in Munich at which our long-gestated monster was to come to birth and receive the name ALGOL 68. " Comm ACM 24(2), 75-83 (1981)

Sep 1995: Byte: a monster compared to ALGOL 60

ALGOL 68, a monster compared to ALGOL 60, appears. Some members of the specifications committee--including C.A.R. Hoare and Niklaus Wirth--protest its approval. ALGOL 68 proves difficult to implement.

March 25, 2000: Ferguson: became bloated ... (The transmogrification point?)

Though Algol implemented some novel concepts, such as recursive calling of functions, the next version of the language, Algol 68, became bloated and difficult to use (www.byte.com).

11:27, 18 August 2005: wikipedia "the bloatedness of ALGOL 68"

(This statement was in part a criticism of the bloatedness of ALGOL 68.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ALGOL&diff=49958153&oldid=49720005

This statement by Hoare was in part a criticism of the bloatedness of ALGOL 68. It is sometimes erroneously attributed to Edsger Dijkstra, also known for his pointed comments, who helped to implement an early ALGOL 60 compiler.

Conclusion: Evolution of Algol68

It seems rather ironic that Algol 68 - completed and obsoleted before the end of 1968 - has by 2005 managed to finally evolve into the bloated and mythical Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. There are other languages and API's that by many more orders of magnitude deserve the metaphor.

I am thinking (until we find an authoritive source from the same decade/century) that it would be best to replace the "Bloated" comment with Hoare's exact orginal 1968 words, i.e. that he expected a "long-gestated monster" called ALGOL 68.

When/if we have a concensus, then I would be beholding if you would do the page update.

Sincerely NevilleDNZ 22:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Old Skool Esperanzial note

Since this isn't the result of an AC meeting, I have decided to go Old Skool. This note is to remind you that the elections are taking place now and will end at 23:50 UTC on 2006-04-29. Please vote here. Thanks. --Celestianpower háblame 20:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Just another RFA thank you note

Dear Quarl, I appreciate your vote and your kind words in my RFA. It has passed with an unexpected 114/2/2 and I feel honored by this show of confidence in me. Cheers! ←Humus sapiens ну? 03:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
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