What minimum should a person know before saying "I know Python"

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 22 September 2013 23:41:10 Dennis Lee Bieber did opine:

> On Sun, 22 Sep 2013 14:55:24 -0400, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com>
> 
> declaimed the following:
> >Then it seems to me that work in the direction should be an active
> >feature request.  Unforch, as I've said before, I'm rowing this barge
> >with a toothpick for an oar. :)
> >
> >I would be interesting to see if the "bait" is taken. :)
> 
> 	Unfortunately, I see that as a requiring a change at the OS level.

Without knowing exactly how this was done on the Miggies, and the level of 
security we have here compared to zero on the amiga because of its flat, no 
mmu memory mapping, precludes my having a thought to argue about it in my 
wildest dreams.

Re ARexx, its biggest Achilles heel was the Rexx.lib, which became so 
obvious that Joanne Dow and someone else whose name I've spaced in the 
ensuing 15 years, actually dissed it, found several buglets and one real 
whoodoozy and fixed them, which enhanced the amiga's long term stability 
such that even the web server only had to be rebooted at 2 to 3 week 
intervals.  Yes, that Joanne Dow, you might remember the name from her bix 
days, is a friend of mine.  Quite a Lady IMO.  About as creative as anyone 
I've ever met in coming up with lady-like versions of screw you etc. ;-)  
Last I knew a year back up the log, she was still working, I don't have too 
many years on her, and my use by date has passed a long time ago Dennis, 
I'll be 79 on the next 4th.

> 	Even on the OS that REXX was developed upon, my books give a strong
> hint that the only application that was readily "address app" compatible
> was a text editor. ARexx piggy-backed on the underlying linked list
> messages on "findable" message ports.
> 
> 	Until the OS supports a multiple writer IPC with return addressing 
in
> an easy API, it's unlikely to be created. UDP/IP might be a way -- but
> UDP has that nasty unreliability factor. Amiga message ports had
> guaranteed delivery (as long as the receiving process read the queued
> messages; and VMS mailboxes were similar).
> 
> 	Multiple writer -- as any process could send messages to the single
> receiving port; it wasn't a socket server style where connection
> requests on a single port would be assigned a distinct port subsequent
> usage.
> 
> 	Then again, the Amiga auto-config for boards pre-dates the PCI-
express
> configuration system, which is very similar.

And that, despite being mostly written in Lisp, worked very well.  The fact 
that for every board initialized at boot time required a soft reboot that 
the user wasn't made obviously aware of, could get interesting though.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
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