some problems for an introductory python test

[Hope Rouselle]

Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 3:51 AM Hope Rouselle <hrouselle at jevedi.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> writes:
>> >> Wow, I kinda feel the same as you here.  I think this justifies
>> >> perhaps
>> >> using a hardware solution.  (Crazy idea?! Lol.)
>> >
>> > uhhh........ Yes. Very crazy idea. Can't imagine why anyone would
>> > ever
>> > think about doing that.
>>
>> Lol.  Really?  I mean a certain panic button.  You know the GNU Emacs.
>> It has this queue with the implications you mentioned --- as much as it
>> can.  (It must of course get the messages from the system, otherwise it
>> can't do anything about it.)  And it has the panic button C-g.  The
>> keyboard has one the highest precedences in hardware interrupts,
>> doesn't
>> it not?  A certain very important system could have a panic button that
>> invokes a certain debugger, say, for a crisis-moment.
>>
>> But then this could be a lousy engineering strategy.  I am not an
>> expert
>> at all in any of this.  But I'm surprised with your quick
>> dismissal. :-)
>>
>> > Certainly nobody in his right mind would have WatchCat listening on
>> > the serial port's Ring Indicator interrupt, and then grab a paperclip
>> > to bridge the DTR and RI pins on an otherwise-unoccupied serial port
>> > on the back of the PC. (The DTR pin was kept high by the PC, and
>> > could
>> > therefore be used as an open power pin to bring the RI high.)
>>
>> Why not?  Misuse of hardware?  Too precious of a resource?
>>
>> > If you're curious, it's pins 4 and 9 - diagonally up and in from the
>> > short
>> > corner. http://www.usconverters.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=61&chapter=0
>>
>> You know your pins!  That's impressive.  I thought the OS itself could
>> use something like that.  The fact that they never do... Says
>> something,
>> doesn't it?  But it's not too obvious to me.
>>
>> > And of COURSE nobody would ever take an old serial mouse, take the
>> > ball out of it, and turn it into a foot-controlled signal... although
>> > that wasn't for WatchCat, that was for clipboard management
>> > between my
>> > app and a Windows accounting package that we used. But that's a
>> > separate story.
>>
>> Lol.  I feel you're saying you would. :-)
>
> This was all a figure of speech, and the denials were all tongue in
> cheek. Not only am I saying we would, but we *did*. All of the above.

Cool! :-) 

> The Ring Indicator trick was one of the best, since we had very little
> other use for serial ports, and it didn't significantly impact the
> system during good times, but was always reliable when things went
> wrong.
>
> (And when I posted it, I could visualize the port and knew which pins
> to bridge, but had to go look up a pinout to be able to say their pin
> numbers and descriptions.)

Nice!

>> I heard of Python for the first time in the 90s.  I worked at an ISP.
>> Only one guy was really programming there, Allaire ColdFusion.  But,
>> odd enough, we used to say we would ``write a script in Python'' when
>> we meant to say we were going out for a smoke.  I think that was
>> precisely because nobody knew that ``Python'' really was.  I never
>> expected it to be a great language.  I imagined it was something like
>> Tcl.  (Lol, no offense at all towards Tcl.)
>
> Haha, that's a weird idiom!

Clueless people --- from Rio de Janeiro area in Brazil. :-)  It was
effectively just an in-joke.

> Funny you should mention Tcl.
>
> https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html

Cool!  Speaking of GUIs and Python, that Google software called Backup
and Sync (which I think it's about to be obsoleted by Google Drive) is
written in Python --- it feels a bit heavy.  The GUI too seems a bit
slow sometimes.  Haven't tried their ``Google Drive'' as a replacement
yet.