The Lounge - CodeProject

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch9-Feb-20 12:38

9-Feb-20 12:38

Maybe they reuse numbers. The paper Terrence referred to was pretty old judging by the other comments, though that would be strange if they did.

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Jon McKee9-Feb-20 14:54

Jon McKee

9-Feb-20 14:54

The paper's from 1990, but maybe the numbers don't distinguish between departments so there's a TR90-30 from the CS department too or something. No clue, but now I know heat kernels are a thing Laugh | :laugh:

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch9-Feb-20 15:10

honey the codewitch

9-Feb-20 15:10

haha, well maybe he mistyped the comment. I don't know. this source is decades old - very late 80s in some places.

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Randor 9-Feb-20 15:18

Randor

9-Feb-20 15:18

Well,

I invested 10 minutes looking into this and found the thesis here:

Obtaining practical variants of LL (k) and LR (k) for k greater than 1 by splitting the atomic k-tuple[^]

I can't seem to find the original technical report. I even checked the TRAIL archives[^]. Although I suspect the original paper is behind this wall[^].

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch9-Feb-20 15:54

honey the codewitch

9-Feb-20 15:54

Yeah I found his thesis but it explains the theory of the code, but not the code itself, which is rather convoluted.

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Jane's Diary10-Feb-20 6:01

Jane's Diary

10-Feb-20 6:01

There is also

A Practical approach to LL(k); LLm(n) [TR-EE 92-30] (1992)
and
The Use of Predicates In LL(k) And LR(k) Parser Generators (Technical Summary) [TR-EE 93-25] (1993)

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch10-Feb-20 7:13

honey the codewitch

10-Feb-20 7:13

I've got them both. They aren't going over the bits i need them to cover. Instead they're introducing new algorithms.

What I need is a paper on an existing algorithm before i try to extend it.

Whoops I got confused over which thread this was. Thought it was my other rant Laugh | :laugh:

please disregard

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

BillWoodruff9-Feb-20 17:20

BillWoodruff

9-Feb-20 17:20

There is an Ockham's Razor hypothesis: often, in the academic world, what matters is passing the orals, and getting the advanced degree by whatever means. All the code has to actually do is exhibit some functionality: the effort goes into the thesis, and getting the thesis committee members to sign off on it.

Most likely, the author knew the likelihood of any reviewer actually examining his code was low. That may account for his "teasing" remark you cite.

I can speak from personal experience on this: I was awarded a Master's degree from UC Berkeley after returning from a year-long 1975~76 fellowship for study in India with a 200+ page thesis with 200+ footnotes. None of my committee actually read it ! I remember with delight my meeting with the key person on signing off that the thesis was kosher in terms of methodology: he picked up the thesis, appeared to be weighing it, and said: "well, as long as I don't have to read this ..."

I was kinda disturbed by this: both happy I was getting the degree six-months early, and, disappointed no one read the tome I literally sweated blood to write Smile | :)

Of course, as Bob sang: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali

modified 10-Feb-20 6:13am.

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Forogar 10-Feb-20 3:27

Forogar

10-Feb-20 3:27

Quote:
200+ page thesis with 200+ footnotes.

My thesis was only 85 pages, including some short code listings, and no-one read that either! "That looks like enough work. Here, have a PhD!"

- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

BillWoodruff10-Feb-20 12:51

BillWoodruff

10-Feb-20 12:51

Hi Forogar, I am kind of long-winded Smile | :)

My project was a collection of academic research, field notes, interviews, case studies, etc. Humanities/sociology/psychology. No code, for me, in that incarnation.

«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Stuart Dootson10-Feb-20 1:57

Stuart Dootson

10-Feb-20 1:57

PCCTS? If so - does that have anything of interest that isn't also in ANTLR?

Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch10-Feb-20 3:02

honey the codewitch

10-Feb-20 3:02

it was something ANTLR was a part of back when antlr was written in C and public domain

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

Gary Wheeler10-Feb-20 7:02

Gary Wheeler

10-Feb-20 7:02

Hmm. While the tone of the comment isn't helpful, the content is useful. A long time ago in a job far, far away... I implemented an algorithm from a master's thesis in a piece of code. I documented the source pretty thoroughly - thesis title, author name, institution, dates, institution identification numbers, and so on. After having been the victim of plagiarism(*), I despise people who fail to attribute sources.

(*) The quarter I took a class called Real-Time Programming (I got A's) my final project listing was missing from the cabinet where instructors returned projects. A couple quarters later I got called into the department chairman's office. Someone had taken the RTP class and turned in a program 99% identical to mine. The instructor remembered my code because I was the only person in class who used assembler macros. At first they asked if I had given or sold the code to someone. I told them that my listing had gone missing when I took the course, which the instructor remembered. The last I heard, the person who did all of this was expelled from the university for the quarter and on probation for the remainder of his time.

Software Zen: delete this;

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch10-Feb-20 7:13

honey the codewitch

10-Feb-20 7:13

I'm sorry to hear that. It's terrible when people do that. I'm glad you got your justice though. =)

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

MadMyche10-Feb-20 16:13

MadMyche

10-Feb-20 16:13

Naturally I was curious too... and had to do some searching.

I actually enjoyed reading another article, the way this was told is so like A long time ago, on a compter far far away...
The Internet Worm Program: An Analysis
Purdue Technical Report CSD-TR-823
On the evening of 2 November 1988, someone infected the Internet with a worm program.
https://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/tech-reps/823.pdf

Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch10-Feb-20 21:23

honey the codewitch

10-Feb-20 21:23

haha nice

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

rjmoses11-Feb-20 5:36

rjmoses

11-Feb-20 5:36

The only comment found in a 40,000 line IBM 360 assembly language program I once had to modify was at the very top: "Be prepared with bottle in hand before attempting to modified this program."

One bottle wasn't enough.

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

honey the codewitch11-Feb-20 8:19

honey the codewitch

11-Feb-20 8:19

OMG no.

Real programmers use butterflies

Re: found in comments in some early 90's C code

OldDBA12-Feb-20 7:34

OldDBA

12-Feb-20 7:34

Probably in 1980 (or +- 4 years) had a user complain because the computer would not accept Feb 29 as a valid date. We had been using the software involved for about 3 years at that point. When we looked at the source code we found this comment.
"Thirty days hath September.
All the rest I can't remember.
Except February which never works right anyway."

There was no code to handle leap years! The quick fix was to change days in February to 29 so we could run the advertisement in the Newspaper on that date and have time to implement a correct routine.

Windy out there

The pompey9-Feb-20 3:37

The pompey

9-Feb-20 3:37

Storm Ciara has just blown the roof off my local cheese shop.

There’s de-Brie everywhere

Re: Windy out there

Mike Hankey9-Feb-20 3:56

Mike Hankey

9-Feb-20 3:56

I read this as "Storm Cialis...", I suppose that would give it a whole other meaning?

Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!

JaxCoder.com

Re: Windy out there

lopatir9-Feb-20 4:32

lopatir

9-Feb-20 4:32

I heard the swiss was OK, blew right through it.

after many otherwise intelligent sounding suggestions that achieved nothing the nice folks at Technet said the only solution was to low level format my hard disk then reinstall my signature. Sadly, this still didn't fix the issue!

Gone with the wind

RickZeeland9-Feb-20 4:37

RickZeeland

9-Feb-20 4:37