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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Welcome to the dark side

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CaptainBoing

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Joined: 07/09/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2170
Posted: 09:51am 13 Nov 2020
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JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 10:21am 13 Nov 2020
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I wonder why.

MS has got or had lots of talented people and demanded so often (long after Windows existed) and loudly the right to innovate.  Well, get on with it guys, no-one's stopping you!!

John
 
thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
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Posted: 10:54am 13 Nov 2020
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  JohnS said  I wonder why.


My guess, "control". Hire the innovators/disruptors so that in the event they create something that will disrupt your business model you can either supress it or are well placed to get ahead of the game.

Best wishes,

Tom
Edited 2020-11-13 20:55 by thwill
MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures
 
robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
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Posted: 11:58am 13 Nov 2020
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  thwill said  
  JohnS said  I wonder why.

My guess, "control". Hire the innovators/disruptors so that in the event they create something that will disrupt your business model you can either supress it or are well placed to get ahead of the game.


my guess is that microsoft thought, if they paid him enough money, he might get rid of all that silly whitespace and add in proper block begin/end statements    

but then microsoft is a bit late, the horse has already bolted. python is out there in the world and well beyond the control of one single individual - even if said individual is the original creator.


cheers,
rob   :-)
 
johnd
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Joined: 22/10/2020
Location: United States
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Posted: 12:23pm 13 Nov 2020
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They could make python4 incompatible with python3, just as 3 was to 2.  God, what a mess that was (still is).
 
Nimue

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Joined: 06/08/2020
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Posted: 12:45pm 13 Nov 2020
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  johnd said  They could make python4 incompatible with python3, just as 3 was to 2.  God, what a mess that was (still is).


Interesting that I read that Visual Studio now support JupyterLab/Notebooks - so the Python-fu is getting some love.  https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support

In fairness though it will be called PythonWOKE edition.

N
Entropy is not what it used to be
 
markboston36
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Joined: 27/10/2020
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Posted: 04:13pm 13 Nov 2020
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i like python its the first language i "got" its fairly simple once you get past the stupid white space. till this day every time i get an error im going back fixing whitespace.
 
William Leue
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Joined: 03/07/2020
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Posted: 04:15pm 13 Nov 2020
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It might have something to do with AI, since Python is the most popular language for machine learning.

-Bill
 
markboston36
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Posted: 04:20pm 13 Nov 2020
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funny how things change. back in the 70s-80s it was lisp. no lisp is almost a dead language and python is soaring. interesting thing though python took a lot from lisp.

im a big lisper thats the language im learning now and i like it a lot. i wonder how the world would be different if lisp hadn't faded into the background and c took over?
 
LeoNicolas

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Posted: 05:06pm 13 Nov 2020
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  William Leue said  It might have something to do with AI, since Python is the most popular language for machine learning.

-Bill


I agree William, I believe it's to be applied to the company AI, probably to improve Azure API for machine learning... Windows is not Microsoft's main source of money anymore, it's Azure.
 
RetroJoe

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Joined: 06/08/2020
Location: Canada
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Posted: 05:28pm 13 Nov 2020
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Yikes - is P# in our future?? I am praying the bad old days of Microsoft perverting the world with their own proprietary "enhancements" are behind us, and that (a) this move will solidify Python's ascendancy in the DS/AI/ML realm, and (b) Nadella realizes that the reason Python's popularity is rising is because it's open and cross-platform. To their credit, they managed to not destroy LinkedIn after they acquired it - can't say the same for Skype :(
Edited 2020-11-14 03:28 by RetroJoe
Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P.
 
JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 06:40pm 13 Nov 2020
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  markboston36 said  i wonder how the world would be different if lisp hadn't faded into the background and c took over?

Good grief! LISP & C are used for very very different things.

LISP has always been rather niche and never used much if at all elsewhere.  C spread far & wide (quite a bit wider than makes sense).

John
 
markboston36
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Posted: 07:06pm 13 Nov 2020
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  JohnS said  
  markboston36 said  i wonder how the world would be different if lisp hadn't faded into the background and c took over?

Good grief! LISP & C are used for very very different things.

LISP has always been rather niche and never used much if at all elsewhere.  C spread far & wide (quite a bit wider than makes sense).

John


That was my point. I think the world would of been a lot different in terms of technology had lisp not faded. Now whether or not that is a good or a bad thing is what your point of view is.

You could write an OS in lisp(LISP machine OS was written in lisp). Now could something like unix be written in lisp instead of c? interesting to think about.

i didn't mean to siderail the discussion.
 
JohnS
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Posted: 07:27pm 13 Nov 2020
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It's just daft to write an OS in LISP.  It is missing all manner of things that are needed and would need kludging.

C is expressive and very suitable for it which is why it's used so much.  You can bet Geoff used C instead of LISP for MMBasic for good reasons!

John
 
RetroJoe

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Posted: 11:33pm 13 Nov 2020
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  JohnS said   C is expressive...


From the Wikipedia entry:

  Quote  The term expressive power may be used with a range of meaning. It may mean a measure of the ideas expressible in that language:

1) regardless of ease (theoretical expressivity)
2) concisely and readily (practical expressivity)


John, I submit you are referring to C's theoretical expressivity i.e. if you can imagine doing something on a von Neumnan computer, you can very likely implement that idea in C. By this definition, assembler or machine language is the ultimate in expressiveness.

I prefer the second definition and is the one I use day-to-day i.e. how concisely and readily can I express an algorithm in a given language? By this measure, BASIC is more expressive than C, and Python is more expressive than BASIC (all the kvetching about mandatory whitepace notwithstanding :)

I won't opine on the expressiveness of LISP relative to the descendants of FORTRAN - it's syntax is completely alien to me.

Interestingly, Wikipedia claims LISP is the second-oldest 3GL - only FORTRAN is older, by one year.

Given that it could have gone either way, Mark's counterfactual thought experiment is an interesting one i.e.  i.e. "What would modern computing look like if LISP-type languages had dominated, instead of FORTRAN-type ones"?

I guess we'll never know, except to suggest that we may have "missed a trick" or two along the way, as LISP-type constructs keep seeping into contemporary languages like Haskell, Clojure and Python.
Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P.
 
JohnS
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Posted: 11:53pm 13 Nov 2020
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We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

John
 
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