The "loop and a half"

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 3:35 PM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Have you ever worked on a slow remote session where a GUI is
>> completely impracticable (or maybe even unavailable), and redrawing
>> the screen is too expensive to do all the time?
>
> So where does the redrawing happen? The machine youre sitting on (let's
> call it 'A') and send remote commands or retrieving text files? Or the
> redrawing must be synced on both A and
> the remote machine? If so, then why so?
> How does the bandwidth implies that you must edit stuff in the console on
> A?
> And not in a nice editor with normal fonts?
> Am i missing something or your 'A' machine cannot use graphics? Even on 386
> computers
> there was graphics and keybord&mouse input. That is definitely what I would
> want
> for editing files. Yes I've tried line by line eding back in DOS times and
> that really sucks.

Mostly, I use an SSH session without X11 forwarding, so everything
happens on that link. Redrawing happens on "A", and the program runs
on "B". It is technologically possible to have a GUI (that's what X11
forwarding is for), but it's a lot more fiddliness and bandwidth, and
it requires that "B" have the appropriate GUI libraries installed, so
I often don't or can't do that.

Generally, my preferred editor is nano, since it lives within those
requirements but still has a decent UI. It's not always available
though, and it's useful to know how to manage without it. But even
though you won't always be doing this sort of thing, it's definitely
something that a *programming language designer* should be aware of.
Basic networking is critical to any modern language.

ChrisA