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10:13 gaxar Hello.
10:14 gaxar Why did Gosling get kicked off the development team for his own invention?
10:15 gaxar Also, why no applets?
10:15 gaxar Are applets a security problem for browsers?
10:15 gaxar I thought that browsers no longer supported Java applets.
10:22 jreicher Why do you think Gosling got kicked off?
10:23 Para Googling "java history of applets" tells you everything necessary.
10:29 jreicher Browsers are a security problem for browsers, as far as I'm concerned.
10:29 jreicher But what's this Gosling thing?
10:30 Para FWIW I think all these questions are explained by relevant Wikipedia articles (James Gosling, Java Applet) and their source links.
10:31 Para I'm slightly hangry at the moment so I'd maybe even consider point to LLMs as summarization machines. I'm a (hungry) human, let the machine do what it's supposed to.
10:31 jreicher I already looked at Wikipedia. I'm missing something but I will keep looking.
10:32 jreicher (I know Gosling left voluntarily; that's very different from being kicked)
10:32 Para Well, matter of perspective and how messages often get distorted when told by middlemen with their own agendas.
10:35 gaxar Oh.
10:35 gaxar I think I just misremembered what I heard.
10:36 dreamreal Why do you ask, though?
10:36 gaxar How do you find novel problems to solve in computer programming. I want to invent something new.
10:36 dreamreal (not a problem to ask, but even so, why?)
10:36 Para gaxar: scratch your own itch
10:36 gaxar Well, I didn't like it when Steve Jobs died.
10:36 gaxar I didn't like it when Bill Gates left Microsoft.
10:36 dreamreal gaxar: probably robotics, but yes, scratch your own itch, what do you find annoying or insufficient, when do you find yourself combining tools when you shouldn't have to
10:36 gaxar I didn't like it when Oracle took Java from Sun.
10:37 dreamreal Oracle didn't take Java from Sun
10:37 dreamreal Jobs was always going to die
10:37 dreamreal Bill Gates leaving MS is probably a good thing for its stockholders and for him
10:37 gaxar And I wish that Gosling was still directing the development of Java, although I don't really have a problem with the way Kava is now.
10:37 dreamreal Why? What did Java ever do to you?
10:37 gaxar Java
10:38 Para Jobs even kinda died in a worse way because of his own hippie tantrums. But that's...not really relevant.
10:38 dreamreal Gosling always seemed stunned that Java escaped hard installations
10:38 dreamreal I'm not sure that him being "in control" would have been a good thing
10:39 Para George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney. Disney ruined Star Wars. Lucas got the money, he didn't ruin Star Wars. Properties are not automatically transitive or infectious.
10:39 gaxar When I was younger, I was in a program because of my mental illness (I think that is why I was there.) And someone took me to visit a college where they teach computer science. Someone showed me Java, and I remembered Java from when I was even younger, when I was reading a book about it. So, I desired to go to college and to learn Java. Then I switched to C#. Now I want to learn Java again.
10:39 dreamreal What I don't get about Star Wars is *why* he sold it
10:39 dreamreal he didn't need to sell it: it would have been fine being static and "done"
10:39 dreamreal and he didn't need the money
10:39 jreicher gaxar: why do you want to learn Java?
10:40 dreamreal And there's absolutely nothing preventing you from learning Java now, we'll help as we can
10:40 gaxar I like C# and Java. I also like C#. I also like C, C++, and Javascript, and Ruby. I want to build things in Java.
10:40 Para dreamreal: He basically got tired of it all, and with Filoni et al he saw an out. I mean the dude's old, happy retirement without being bound to that stuff is more helpful, especially since the Star Wars fanbase is/was very clingy.
10:40 gaxar dreamreal, thank you.
10:40 Para dreamreal: So, selling it was an official "I'm done, stop bothering me about this." kind of thing really.
10:41 dreamreal Para: pffft, he should have just isolated himself more, the burden of what he created was always going to be an aspect of having created it
10:41 dreamreal That's an aspect of every artist's career
10:41 dreamreal "Oh, crap, I created something people like, now I get to be part of that something forever"
10:42 jreicher gaxar: You've said what you like, but you haven't explained why.
10:42 jreicher Why Java?
10:42 Para dreamreal: American dream (of cashing out)? Who knows. He did create that museum which opened recently with his newfound freedom.
10:42 Para Or art gallery or whatever it was.
10:43 gaxar I skipped Numbers and Strings and just went on to Generic, figuring that I could look up the APIs when I Needed them. I'm done with Generics, though I'm not sure I remember everything. Now, I am going through Essential Java class. However, I may have forgotten some things from Learning the Java language. I'm been progressing at a snail pace because I feel fatigued most of the time.
10:43 dreamreal He didn't need the cash, cashing out isn't "the dream"
10:43 dreamreal gaxar: well, doing Java itself is more useful than trying to memorize facts from a tutorial
10:43 dreamreal I have to look crap up all the time
10:44 dreamreal learn the modus of development, the ideas, not the techniques
10:44 gaxar I like Java because of the syntax and APIs, and because of references and garbage collection, and other features of Java. However, I also like using pointers in C and C++.
10:44 dreamreal the techniques can take care of themselves
10:44 gaxar I am not sure why I like Java exactly.
10:44 dreamreal does it matter?
10:45 Para Java is as boring as my mind's main highway. That's why I like it.
10:45 gaxar I haven't done much coding in a long time.
10:45 dreamreal gaxar: doesn't matter, it's like riding a bike
10:45 jreicher gaxar: references are very similar to pointers from C and C++. It's an equivalent of the non-pointers that Java doesn't really have.
10:45 dreamreal Heh, if I told you the language I think I loved most, I think you'd be quite surprised
10:45 dreamreal actually, that's a good game: guess what it is, y'all
10:45 jreicher dreamreal: I want to know now!
10:45 jreicher Hmm
10:45 jreicher Eiffel?
10:45 dreamreal Nein
10:46 dreamreal good guess, but no, I don't actually know if I'd recognize eiffel
10:46 Para dreamreal: Kotlin...no wait you said surprised.
10:46 dreamreal I think you'd be surprised, yes, and no, it's not kotlin
10:46 jreicher Smalltalk?
10:46 dreamreal nyet
10:46 deepy pascal
10:46 Para https://github.com/tenderlove/phuby ?
10:46 javabot Para's title: "GitHub - tenderlove/phuby: phuby wraps PHP in a loving embrace · GitHub"
10:46 jreicher if it's not smalltalk or eiffel then I'm guessing not OO
10:46 dreamreal nope, not at all
10:47 deepy maybe it's a trick question, what about english?
10:47 dreamreal jreicher: I'm giving you no hints beyond "i think you'd be surprised" and "it might surprise you it even exists, are you sure it's not the same as _____?"
10:47 dreamreal deepy: nope, definitely a programming language, has a spec and everything
10:48 jreicher I really hope it's Lisp. Please can it be Lisp. That would be hilarious.
10:48 dreamreal What I'm not going to do, directly, is mention what platforms I run it on, or ran it on
10:48 dreamreal jreicher: I like lisp (I'm eyeing some clojure right now) but it's not lisp
10:49 jreicher Forth?
10:49 dreamreal nope
10:49 jreicher TCL?
10:49 dreamreal good guess but EW TCL WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
10:49 dreamreal good guess was forth, tcl is gross
10:49 gaxar Do you think I should practice coding in Java with the knowledge I have, looking up APIs as I need them. I am trying to regain knowledge of essential Java classes, and I never learned all of them.
10:49 jreicher APL?
10:49 dreamreal gaxar: yes
10:49 dreamreal jreicher: no
10:49 gaxar Okay.
10:49 gaxar Thank you.
10:50 jreicher What the hell is forth-ish that isn't APL. Hmm.
10:50 dreamreal gaxar: I've been doing java for 25 years and I don't think *I* know "all the essential java classes"
10:50 gaxar oh okay.
10:50 dreamreal jreicher: I didn't say it was forth-ish! I just said forth is a good guess.
10:51 jreicher erlang?
10:51 dreamreal No, but I do like a lot about erlang. That is not a hint.
10:51 gaxar Do you think AI will replace programmers and coders?
10:51 dreamreal gaxar: no.
10:51 gaxar I don't want it to.
10:51 gaxar That's good.
10:51 gaxar Why not?
10:52 dreamreal Because AI lacks biological imperatives. We program AI and think it programs as a result. It's just one more layer in an onion we've been working on since the 1950s.
10:52 jreicher Short version: AI doesn't do anything without a prompt. Figuratively and literally.
10:52 dreamreal gaxar: https://bytecode.news/posts/2026/03/the-ai-dilemma
10:52 javabot dreamreal's title: "The AI Dilemma | bytecode.news"
10:52 gaxar I read that a lot of companies got rid of developers for AI.
10:53 jreicher And companies never do anything stupid?
10:53 dreamreal gaxar: some companies, some developers, it's the new offshoring effort
10:53 dreamreal and will result in the same things that offshoring did: "oh, wait, that might not have been the smartest idea"
10:53 jreicher dreamreal: modula?
10:53 gaxar I'll read that later. I don't have the energy.
10:53 dreamreal bean counters are stupid
10:53 dreamreal jreicher: no, but I WILL say you're getting closer!
10:54 dreamreal jreicher: and it's about effin' time, loser!
10:54 dreamreal and believe it or not, that's less of a hint than you'd think :D
10:54 dreamreal Come on, guys
10:54 dreamreal do gooder
10:55 gaxar I think AI can only generate what developers already invented. That's my opinion, because the AI can't know how to do something it wasn't trained to.
10:55 dreamreal I've given you a unch of hints now
10:55 dreamreal gaxar: you're sort of right and sort of wrong
10:55 gaxar What do you mean?
10:55 dreamreal I mean you are circling something factual while missing the nature of creativity and growth
10:55 jreicher dreamreal: simula?
10:55 jreicher Oh wait you said not OO
10:56 jreicher Go?
10:56 dreamreal jreicher: nope, you already danced with smalltalk, and I didn't say "not OO," you guys did
10:56 gaxar dreamreal, can you elaborate?
10:56 dreamreal gaxar: I can, but there's a reason I gave you a URL :D
10:56 dreamreal ... because I already elaborated
10:56 gaxar Oh okay. Sorry. I'll read that later.
10:56 gaxar Did you write the article?
10:57 dreamreal gaxar: basically, AIs are combinatory machines: they can indeed create new combinations when prompted or occasionally at random
10:57 dreamreal so "new" can in fact come from them, and they're horribly useful tools
10:57 gaxar Oh okay.
10:57 dreamreal but with that said, they REMAIN tools, and people who forget that are morons
10:58 dreamreal gaxar: and yes, I wrote that article
10:58 gaxar Oh okay. Cool,
10:58 gaxar Cool.
10:58 dreamreal Actually, you guys are all funny: I actually mention languages IN that article...
10:59 dreamreal but the language I have the strongest emotional love for isn't one of the languages I referred to, because (another hint!) it's a little too obscure for a general article
10:59 jreicher dreamreal: go?
10:59 dreamreal do the pattern matching thing programmers are supposed to be good at!
10:59 dreamreal jreicher: no
11:00 jreicher C?
11:00 dreamreal The languages that article mentions, specifically: paradox, delphi and turbo pascal 7, C++ ...
11:00 dreamreal nope, not C, I actually added C *after* perl
11:01 jreicher Oh I missed your earlier comment. A little obscure huh?
11:01 gaxar Well, I'm going to go now. I might be back on sometime later. I am not sure.
11:01 dreamreal gaxar: good luck, have fun
11:01 gaxar Thank you. Have a good day.
11:01 dreamreal jreicher: it's a little obscure. Maybe a lot obscure.
11:01 dreamreal it's also NOT on my resume.
11:01 dreamreal )I was waiting for someone to throw out louis/ii like a wanker.)
11:03 jreicher Prolog? (Not that obscure, but I'm running out of ideas)
11:03 dreamreal I am willing to answer ONE indirect question about it. (The question can't be "what's the name," for example.)
11:04 dreamreal nope, not prolog, although that one does occupy a favorable position that I will never ever use again
11:04 jreicher There are too many languages. I don't even know if it's declarative, imperative, or multi
11:04 Para Scala? No one even bothered to suggest that one.
11:05 dreamreal that's because scala's the language I anti-love most
11:05 Para aka the mandatory humor option
11:05 Para I kinda still miss Groovy.
11:05 dreamreal jreicher: well, think of a question that would enlighten you, and ask it!
11:05 dreamreal groovy's still there, unloved and abandoned and kinda stenchy
11:06 dreamreal I know which question *I* would ask, but then again, I know the answer
11:06 dreamreal I'm probably cheating
11:07 dreamreal (FWIW, I thought of the question when I was getting coffee, and its answer has not changed: I, uh, am amused by the answer but it's also quite valid. Remember: I am OLD.)
11:07 jreicher I don't know how general I can make the question. What year/decade was the language invented?
11:07 dreamreal dang it, there's another hint
11:07 dreamreal first release was mid-70s
11:07 jreicher Ah.
11:08 dreamreal that's a great question, I actually had to look it up
11:08 jreicher ML?
11:08 dreamreal machine language? Good lord, ML was invented with the first computers
11:08 jreicher No, no
11:09 jreicher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_(programming_language)
11:09 dreamreal (this is an answer, jreicher)
11:09 dreamreal ML looks crazy
11:11 * dreamreal just gave jreicher a HUGE hint, he's way ahead of the rest of you
11:12 dreamreal you're not asking any questions that would help you
11:12 Harzilein in student-organized cs talks we had someone who was very enthusiastic about scala. alas there was a hint of pythonist condescension in what he said. suggest any feature that's not _actually_ unique (just unique for practical purposes on such a universal platform as jvm) and you've possibly lost me.
11:13 dreamreal Harzilein: I love the idea of scala, but the ecosystem betrayed it to the point where I refuse
11:14 jreicher I'm really struggling with these hints
11:14 dreamreal okay, you guys are about to lose
11:14 dreamreal because I'm over here fanboying as I think about it
11:15 dreamreal my favorite all-time language is one I first encountered on the...
11:15 jreicher 🥁
11:15 dreamreal COMMODORE 64. It is available today and has formal specifications, an open source version, AND commercial versions
11:16 dreamreal And it was one of the first things I went looking for when I got my commodore 64 earlier this year
11:16 dreamreal AND is related distantly to pascal, modula, oberon, despite not sharing history with them
11:16 Harzilein distantly, hmm
11:17 jreicher It can't be basic
11:17 dreamreal It is not. However: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMAL
11:17 dreamreal you guys lose
11:17 Harzilein yeah, i was thinking comal/opencomal
11:17 jreicher Interesting. Never heard of that. I was thinking basic for a while but I thought that was very unlikely.
11:17 dreamreal Harzilein: were you really? Why didn't you throw that out?
11:18 Harzilein one of the muccc guys who used to run the hacker jeopardy at ccc events reminded us of it
11:18 dreamreal I *loved* comal
11:18 Harzilein not closely enough related to pascal
11:18 jreicher It reminds me a bit of qbasic
11:18 Harzilein how was it edited w/o line numbers btw? did it just ignore the regular editor?
11:18 dreamreal jreicher: yeah, totally
11:18 dreamreal It had a text editor facility on the C64
11:19 Harzilein i was interested in hardware particulars of the comal cart at some point
11:19 Harzilein but only ran it for few minutes
11:19 dreamreal I didn't have the cart: I had to load it from disk. But it was *great* for the 64
11:19 Harzilein (on emulation that is)
11:19 dreamreal I can't imagine using it formally today, unfortunately
11:20 Harzilein i think the release history record on the internet is incomplete and that frustrates me to no end
11:20 dreamreal it's still alive but... is it really
11:20 jreicher Just write jvm bytecode. ;)
11:20 Harzilein just like the forth version that was used for the c64 version of kermit is nowhere to be found anymore
11:20 dreamreal yeah. I went from BASIC to 65xx asm to comal to pascal, and pascal is what blew the doors off language-wise
11:21 dreamreal I'd use COMAL at home and UCSD pascal at school, and that was the lever that got me thinking about programming and not programming *languages*
11:21 dreamreal but COMAL was the first one that made me think "there's more here than 800 lines and wishing C64 BASIC didn't comvert integers to floats to do basic math things"
11:23 Harzilein when the bbs i was on moved from the venue where we could share in using it locally to someone's basement, we tried to start a bbs based on a "commercial" package with xbase programmability. alas the documentation was immense but kind of glossed over the fact that the interface between its veneer over xbase and actual xbase was leaky. that meant you had to become an expert in its particular xbase runtime _and_ seek to understand implementation details.
11:23 dreamreal That STILL drives me nuts: BASIC on the 64 *had* integer types but would literally convert to FP to do anything with them, and I have no idea what drove that concept. Back then it was "oh, okay, whatever" but now it's a head-shaker
11:23 dreamreal Harzilein: I did clipper for a few years, I actually used xbase itself (dbase iv) for a little while but OMG clipper was a... little better
11:24 Harzilein it probably was clipper?
11:24 dreamreal clipper was pretty decent: I was doing networking stuff with it myself
11:25 Harzilein there's a terminal _client_ that's basically my equivalent to autumn lamonte's qodem. i'd like to obsess over it until i have a reimplementation.
11:25 Harzilein and of course it comes with a database runtime. not sure i want to get into... what was the floss xbase runtime called... harbour?
11:26 Harzilein (it needed it for phonebook and least cost router and all that jazz)
11:26 dreamreal I don't remember the FLOSS xbase, when I stopped using clipper OSS was still considered pure communism, RMS was still forming a complete manifesto
11:27 Harzilein it's a small implementation otherwise, really. someone wanted a telix equivalent and got hacking. so mine would be a reimplementation of a reimplementation.
11:27 Harzilein (felix, only released in german i think)
11:28 dreamreal After convincing the government to buy clipper and tools to make it tolerable (blinker, multiedit, etc) I was convinced OSS was the way forward
11:28 dreamreal then I met RMS
11:29 Harzilein blinker, hmm. yeah, now i'm convinced what i have on hand is using clipper. probably unsurprising for insider because apparently it was easy to ship your product with their runtime?
11:29 Harzilein insiders*
11:30 dreamreal I thought clipper was okay, loved multiedit for the time, blinker was a great linker for what it was. Now you'd use emacs, usr/bin/joe (which I actually do use), sublime text (which I also use, it's running right now), or IDEA (which... uh... is currently eating about 16G of ram on *one* of my machines), and ld is the only linker you need
11:30 dreamreal yeah, clipper didn't need an external runtime
11:30 Harzilein when i reviewed liberated (pd now actually) retro stuff, i stumbled upon warplink.
11:31 Harzilein alas it's relatively hardcore assembly.
11:31 dreamreal I don't remember warplink; I got my employer to pay for blinker and that was a fight I had no intention of repeating
11:31 dreamreal i ended up working for IBM for a while but they didn't blink at ANYTHING, they were like lizards in that
11:32 dreamreal "oh, you need a better RS/6000 for this. We judge thee meritorious... for now. How many do you want."
11:32 dreamreal (my answer: an open-mouthed "what" followed by "how many you got?" I got one.)
11:55 dreamreal dmlloyd: https://github.com/bezsahara/SimpleIndy
11:55 javabot dreamreal's title: "GitHub - bezsahara/SimpleIndy · GitHub"
11:55 dreamreal I find that whole idea kinda... frustrating. brian goetz responded to the reddit post on it, which is cool - I didn't think he'd bother with reddit - but my thought is "god no"
11:57 dmlloyd there are several such projects IIRC
11:57 Para dreamreal: I was once in a meeting where IBM rep managed to say in one sentence "No one should think about the technology first when refining their ideas so you should really use our Watson to solve your problemn."
11:57 dmlloyd heh
11:58 dreamreal https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/1u5x7fp/making_invokedynamic_usable_from_normal_java/
11:58 Para The whole meeting was insane, but that's a whole another story.
11:59 Para tl;dr guy who made a few millions selling pizza franchise wanted to create AI to give houses personalities and capability to tweet such things as "I think I'm going to be on the market soon for eleventibillion simoleons, please contact me if you want to buy me."
11:59 Para Mention of IBM Watson should date this well enough :)
12:07 dreamreal I wonder if Watson's still a primary project at IBM, actually
12:09 Para In 2022, IBM divested and spun-off their Watson Health division into Merative, which was sold to Francisco Partners, an American private equity firm. The division cost $4 billion to develop but was sold for $1 billion.
12:10 Para Such perfect timing.
12:11 dreamreal Well, I imagine IBM saw quite a bit in the development, too
12:11 dreamreal so seeing it in pure dollars is probably the wrong metric
12:11 Para What does IBM even do as a whole.
12:21 * dreamreal waves at "all that"
13:09 cheeser dreamreal: watson is very much still a big deal for IBM
13:14 dreamreal cheeser: that's good to know.
15:28 dreamreal https://crankgpt.com/
15:28 javabot dreamreal's title: "CrankGPT - Local Human-powered AI"
15:28 nevet CrankGPT — Local Human-powered AI
21:08 NeXeN Para: ibm controls lots of IT service layer contracts
21:08 NeXeN so though some other company may service a channel, there's always big beautiful blue tax
22:35 jreicher dreamreal: did you look at the "is this real" and "technical documentation". Amazing!
22:44 Harzilein i'd omit the entire output stage and just use an old screenreader style robovoice
22:45 Harzilein when it's good enough for stephen hawking lectures, it's good enough for opinions on my recent shower thougt.
22:46 Harzilein +h