gregalt's comments

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018)

I talk about his "Series L" tables here and link to scans of them: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/lovelaces-pro...

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018)

Here's a blog series where I get her program running on a modern computer using a simple transliteration to C: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

Here's my Mandelbrot set generator written in the table language Ada Lovelace wrote her 1843 program for Babbage's Analytical Engine: https://pairdebuggingwithlovelace.hashnode.dev/

The trickiest part was figuring out how to exploit fixed-point underflow to do the equivalent of if(a>4.0) when the only conditional I could use was if(a==0), using arithmetic operations to force underflow for all a>4.0

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: A Logical Coding System Applied to the Eniac (1948) [pdf]

I like reading the original paper in it's original format, but here is searchable text version: https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/48eniac-coding/index...

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: A Logical Coding System Applied to the Eniac (1948) [pdf]

A 1948 report on the conversion of ENIAC from being programmed by a complex wiring of cables and setting switches to the more modern stored program. The writing is accessible, but the introduction and section on test programs are probably most interesting.

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: It's Hard Not to Love ReMarkable's New Colorful E Ink Tablet

How hard is it to print to pdf on a PC/laptop and transfer to the remarkable? I used to do that on my ancient Kindle DX, which I remember being a bit clunky, but not too bad with wireless sync. It was nice avoiding stacks and stacks of paper.

gregalt | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: Does anyone use sound effects in their dev environment?

Alam Turing used the "hoot" instruction on the Manchester computer in the 1940s to signal different things for debugging https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37507707