drran

3rd level languages are compiled into 2nd level languages (assembler, or byte code, or intermediate representation), then into machine code.

Transpilers are compiling from one 3rd level language into another 3rd level language.

Code generators or macros are receiving data and producing code in a 3rd level language.

4th level language receives plain text explanation of a goal and produces code in a 3rd level language. AI based tool is the only tool which is capable to do that, because such process requires understanding of the goal, not a mechanical transformation of input into output. It's possible to implement such AI in Lisp, Prolog, or using ML. Copilot is an example of such AI.

It's possible to implement high-level abstraction in machine code, or compile a high-level language into low level machine code, however it's not possible to hide low-level, machine dependent details in a low level language. It's not possible to hide machine opcodes in machine code, or CPU registers in assembler, or stack in Forth, so a developer must learn these things and deal with them, which makes the development process slower.

So, it's expected to see an order of magnitude improvement in development speed, on average, when jumping from machine code to asm, or from asm to a 3rd level language. Forth doesn't improve speed of development by an order of magnitude comparing to asm, because of the steep learning curve and low level stack management. I tried to learn Forth multiple times, but still cannot program in Forth freely, which makes it unique among 20+ other programming languages I know.

> Railroad Tycoon

Transport Fever?

On fourth level of abstraction, no procedures or functions are used. Copilot is at 4th level.

WTF is layer?

If you are asking what level of abstraction is used by Forth, then the answer is: 2nd. It directly exposes stack, memory, and machine code and provides a thin wrapper on top of that. Developers can build higher levels of abstraction then, of course. It's possible to do an object-oriented programming in machine code, because compiler can.

The trickier question is: What level is Lisp? Is it assembler for Lisp machine (because of opcodes like car, cdr, etc.)? Or, maybe, it is a 4GL because of it advanced meta-programming possibilities?

C is a 3-rd level of abstraction language. Currently, there is no 4-th level of abstraction, so C is a high-level language by definition of «level of abstraction».

Language levels of abstraction:

1. Machine code

2. Assembler

3. A high-level language

C does allow low level things, e.g. access of machine registers or embedding of assembler or machine code, but it is also capable of quite high level of abstraction.

Some of 3-rd level languages allows higher level of abstraction, or hide low level abstractions, e.g. memory management, stack, byte order, bits per number, etc., hover none of them improves programmer productivity by an order of magnitude.

I have a self-sharpening stainless steel kitchen knife made in Czechoslovakia with waved edge. It never sharpened, but it still works just fine for everyday kitchen needs, except for peeling (I have a ceramic peeler for that), because of the waved edge. However, I have no idea where to buy a second one. «Bread knifes» with roughly similar edge are large, thick, and non-flexible.

We are falling into Great Attractor, which is also falling into Shapley Attractor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEAY7LNhdxM

Look at crows, maybe.

https://www.thoughtco.com/crows-are-more-intelligent-than-yo...

> But equally cool how bad it gets if you try the same to compute the position of earth 2^64 years later.

In 2^64 years, Earth will be inside of a larger body. How many digits of Pi you need to predict that?

It's dead simple: «You used encrypted connection today. It's encrypted with 10000024 bit key, which is forbidden by China. You can send your key to us to prove that you are innocent, or go to jail.»

> They were well engineered for the purpose of being a cheap car

Yep.

> that could be easily maintained and kept ready with the state of infrastructure and supply chains in the 1970s USSR.

Which chains? Even gas was hard (impossible) to buy by a civilian without «blat».

Add udev rule, to launch script when an input is connected:

   ACTION=="add", DEVPATH=="*/input/*", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/script.sh $devnode"

+1 for Motorola Droid or G1. Unfortunately, Google killed them for no reason.

Suppose, I'm an author of GPL software. I think that my code costs $1M. I expected that if someone uses my software, according to license, then he will release his software under same license for me. Now, somebody used my $1M project in his $100M project in violation of my GPL license. My losses are $100M.

The manager then can look at data and think, "Hm, these bugs are costly. What we can use to reduce number of bugs to reduce costs?"

Bugs are a waste. Number of bugs can be reduced with better practices: peer review, various tests; better software: linter, automatic verifier, compile time checkers (-Wall + -Werror, rust), code generators, libraries; or additional business process: quality assurance.

To improve something, your manager need to measure it first. You can propose everyday reporting of spent time instead of spying tool, e.g. "2h working on #1234, 6h fixing bug #23456", which is much more valuable to your manager than raw data.

In my previous company, we reduced the number of bugs and time to fix by an order of magnitude, because we were able to see the effect of changes in tooling and development process.

Until they don't.

NATO is not a country. WTF are you talking about?

NATO is a defensive alliance. A country can join or leave NATO alliance. Nobody forces a country to join alliance. The higher threat RF creates for others, the more other countries are wanting to join an alliance to get protection from RF threats.

I highly suspect that your colleagues in Slovakia are invented.

I have relatives in Slovakia. Never heard anything about NATO from them. Can you point out where are you finding that?

Ukraine has weapon-grade nuclear reactors, which produces weapon grade plutonium at scale.

The goal of Great Russian Civilization is to protect and expand the Gorgeous and Mighty Russian Language.

The Russian Empire was known as «Jail of Nations», because they captured so many different nations across a huge area. To consolidate them, they are erasing their identity by forcing all of them to speak a single invented language, called Russian, which is based on Old Slavonic Church language, which is based on South Slavonic dialect as spoken near to Salonika (Greece) a thousand years ago. This is somewhat different from behavior of some other empires (Spanish Empire, Great Britain Empire, etc.), because the language was invented, so it was not native language for anyone, so nobody had an upper leg and nobody can be clearly blamed as invader.

Those, who switched to the new language, invented reasons about why Gorgeous and Mighty Russian language is superior to their laughable and weak native languages, so they have strong beliefs that they need to help those minor nations to escape the hell of speaking them and join the Great Russian Civilization.

Russia(now Ukraine) used Russian (now Ukrainian) language, which was a modernized version of Old Slavonic language, so they refused to accept archaic language. In 1912(?) Folk Assembly of All Russia (now Ukraine) declared rename of Russia (now Ukraine) to Ukraine to avoid confusion with Russian Empire or its language. (It's well hidden fact). Ten years after that, Great Ukrainization started, so millions of Russians (now Ukrainians) switched to Ukrainians, then Great Ukrainization aborted by Russians. 20 millions of Ukrainians were recorded as Russians again, 7 million adults (and 23 million children) were murdered by starvation in Holodomor.

Russian language, Russian culture, etc. are very new. For example, there are 0 (zero) folk songs in Russian language. Russians are studying history of Russia (now Ukraine) instead of history of their own nations. This makes them wonder why Russia now called Ukraine, and why their motherland is captured by Ukrainians. This makes them mad about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Nobody tells them real history, of course.

Since when Ukraine forgot how to make nukes?

Yeah, they love Russia, and Russia love to protect them. Did they form an «ANR» and asked for Russian humanitarian military aid?

Can you name these countries, please?

s/EU/Germany/

Current war of RF with Ukraine is about natural gas. Ukraine tried to drill natural gas near to Slovians`k by contracting Shell, to export natural gas to EU, to block RF from selling to EU. Also, Ukraine won a dispute with Romania about a natural gas field in the Black Sea. These actions threatened Gasprom plans to be $1 trillion company, so Gasprom owners started the war. Everything else is secondary.

RF has border with USA.

RF is extremely predictable. Its behavior was well predicted two decades ago. If you are predicting «happy path» only, then anything that deviates from «happy path» will surprise you. Peace time job for military headquarters is to predict «unhappy path» and prepare for it. Russian tactic is well known among former USSR and Eastern Block countries, so it was easy to predict what they will do:

Will try to return post-soviet countries back to «USSR 2.0».

Will capture Belarus somewhat.

Will station army across Ukrainian border.

Will try to circumvent Kyiv, while distracting Ukrainian army at the South.

> The Budapest Memorandum was, unfortunately, not legally binding. Not justifying the lack of support from the West, but just pointing out an important aspect.

Yep, nobody will be sued when Ukraine will nuke RF in violation of Budapest memorandum. So what?

I cannot understand why DDT is forbidden, but 10000x more powerful insecticides are not forbidden. WTF? Birds are dropping from the sky in Spring, because they have nothing to eat, because bugs are gone while seeds are not ready yet.

Also, air pollution makes them weak. Birds are much more sensitive to air pollution and CO2 level, because they breathe at much higher rate while they have much lower mass than land animals.