Previous - 155. Last of Tisdale
30th programming anniversary
While it wasn't my intention, I spent much of last Saturday confusing a young coder. He had posted a little piece on Medium using a book vs newspaper metaphor to help explain the difference between using arrays and objects for data storage in Javascript. I don't know anything about Javascript, and I haven't done database work in almost 20 years, but I was still interested enough to read this piece.I responded with a vague question about delimiters, which was mainly intended to be supportive and show that people were reading what he's written. But he was unclear about what I meant, so I elaborated with an example of how I used to use multiple delimiters to create multi-dimensional arrays. It wasn't until after I'd posted, that I remembered a couple key facts.
BASIC was my first computer language and it had (what I believe are) traditional data arrays (which give you the capability to store a mass of data and then pull up just the chunk that you need). Then I switched to languages that lacked arrays because they were intended for multimedia work that performed data storage differently. Except that I always ended up on projects where traditional arrays would have come in very handy. So I created my own, virtual arrays.
By pulling my entire "array" into memory, I could use simple coding and any number of delimiters to simulate an array of as many dimensions as I needed, and it worked reasonably fast, though probably not as fast as a real array. (Multi-dimensional arrays, when you go past the second level, were the first programming concept that transcended my ability to picture in my mind what this would look like... rather like nearly everything in quantum mechanics.)
Over time, I developed a robust and flexible set of functions that would do everything I needed to do and forgot that they weren't the real thing.
Since I don't know anything about arrays in Javascript, I can't say how apt this guys analogy is -- it isn't very apt for BASIC arrays, but it works perfectly for my virtual arrays. Step one: Load the book; Step two: Fetch the chapter. And since he was so puzzled he didn't know how to respond, I have no idea if you can specify delimiters or not. And I'm not quite interested enough to start down that rabbit hole. But since this is the 30th anniversary of my transition into software/technical writing, I decided to indulge myself some database reminiscences.
Painting again
I planned phase 2 so carefully and almost everything has gone according to plan. (When I get home I'll see if it needs touching up, if not it will be the first time... ever.) The big thing was to schedule the painting for the one day this week it's reasonably warm so I can leave windows open for cross ventilation. And the weather today is perfect. What is less than perfect is the pile of human crap right under one of the open windows. I just called the city to have it cleaned up, but that will probably be tomorrow when it's cold again and all my windows will be closed.
That aside, it's going well and I'm also cleaning up the long, low bookcase I had to move. This is the bookcase that holds my favorite fiction along with my World Book Encyclopedia from the 1950s. The piece of furniture we bought unfinished in 1960 and stained and varnished ourselves.
It hadn't moved in 14 years so it needed a good cleaning, and I'll oil it up before I reload the books. Honestly, it looks about the same as it did in 1960. It's made of soft wood and what you see is mostly the stain my dad selected. If we had had any idea it would last 57 years we probably would have gone with a nicer wood, maybe oak.
Last I saw the companion chest of drawers it was in my cousin's basement in St Paul. It looked good, too. Do I still have these pieces -- or this bookcase -- because of the labor I invested back then? Or because I always need bookcases and this one just happens to fit perfectly under my front windows? I have to say that last is the crucial factor. I would have left it with the chest of drawers if it hadn't fit so well.
Candide!
p185 [André Delattre on Voltaire] Voltaire, son of a bourgeois Jansenist, was situated from his birth in the opposition, and he would become a leader of it. Jansenists in France, like Puritans in England, were both a religious movement and the central political force of the rising bourgeoisie; both currents, being essentially united, made up between them a dynamism, perhaps the most powerful of the age...Our editor seems to be desperate to find content to pad this Critical Edition. The passage above, which I quote because it helps me understand the social/religious/political dynamic of the age, only hints at the resumption of the topic of The Fall and Free Will in other paragraphs I'm not quoting. This ought to interest me -- as it's another way of viewing the individuation problem that I prefer to approach from the Prometheus angle -- but when this question is so deeply embedded in Christian controversy, my mind wanders. If Shakespeare had been able to see forward 50 or 100 years I think he would have been even more liberal with his "a curse on both your houses." Choosing between Jesuits and Jansenists is a fools game. Rather like betting on whose invisible sky fairy can move the larger immovable object. (Could you update and revitalize some Scholastic controversies by introducing black holes? By definition, God must maintain all information about matter and energy that falls into a black hole, but could he retrieve something if he wished?)
Gustave Lanson - published 1906
p195 And if we just consider a bit, if we pause to visualize the France of Louis XV with all its many abuses and shortcomings: the capricious despotism of its government; the self-centered, extravagant court; the powerful clergy and judiciary, both more concerned with their special privileges than with the general welfare; the financial disorder and oppressive fiscal system; the poverty of the parish priest; the chaotic condition of the laws; the confused conflict between various authorities and their jurisdictions; the intolerance that condemned Protestants to concubinage or hypocrisy and dismissed their pastors to the galleys; the multitude of rules and privileges that were nothing but so many sources of vexation and misery for the common people -- if we compare to those conditions the reforms Voltaire advocated, and if into this Catholic, monarchical France of the old regime we introduce tolerance, freedom of the press, a graduated tax-scale, a uniform code of laws, reforms in criminal procedure, a subordinate, salaried clergy, a program of public assistance, liberal and peaceful principles of government, and honest, conscientious administration, public servants truly concerned with the public interest -- then, and only then, can we realize the extent of the transformation that Voltaire's critiques aimed at bringing about. Only then do we realize how wrong-headed it is to regard Voltaire's work as negative and timid. His criticism labored to produce a new and different France, a France extricated from an old feudal and monarchical chaos that was Roman and ecclesiastical, anarchic and tyrannical...
The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, so to speak. A society based on merit and fairness. And how has that worked out? Reading this I couldn't help thinking that many Trump voters would have recognized the weaknesses of the old regime when it comes to people of means valuing their own privileges and ignoring the plight of the less fortunate.
And in a nation founded on the principle of the separation of church and state, people now argue for bringing the church -- or at least Christianity -- into the state. If we imagine Candide visiting America today what would he think? Actually I find it easier to imagine Candide's reaction than Voltaire's, since Voltaire was so invested in his bourgeois reforms. Candide would have shrugged it off and tended his drip-irrigated, permaculture garden. Voltaire, I fear, would be more like Pangloss in refusing to admit that his path had not led quite where he expected.
In conclusion
Days have passed. There is nothing more in this edition of Candide that I feel the need to comment on. And I've decided to paint the trim of my door and the last window in my apartment, if it ever gets warm again.
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