From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,24ac4e1c8cbfe3c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: G Subject: histrionics Date: 1999/09/09 Message-ID: <37D670CE.855F96BD@interact.net.au> X-Deja-AN: 522544355 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Humanity X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-09-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Matthew Heaney wrote: > G: > > What is your name, BTW? My name is Graeme... from Australia... sorry for the histrionics... my dad is dying of prostate cancer, I am currently very much unemployed, I have had to teach myself (from scratch) as much as I can about programming because the courses are out of my financial reach and my nation is (probably) about to go to war (Indonesia is doing something very Evil just now - shades of Kosovo) and I tend to get a bit touchy at times of stress. That and the fact that one never can tell what someone means just through their words... *sigh* sorry... It is very intimidating to learn a language like this and I am grateful for all the support that I have received at times from the many experts, specialists and poly-capable programmers who frequent here. > > > > I studied systems theory. This relates to set theory but is > literally a more > > dynamic interpretation and extrapolation. I was working on a > specific systems > > theoretical construction involving complexity and elaborating it > through a > > spatiotemporal model (yes.. I know its all a tad obscure). > > I too study systems theory. I just finished Introduction To > Cybernetics, by > Ross Ashby. Great book. I came through philosophy. I was attempting to decipher the work of Niklas Luhmann in cybernetics, among other things, subjects, intellects and theoretical abstractions. It is not all that I have read but my education has been both predominantly autodidactic and eclectic. My interests were specifically in the global structure of a system. Which is to say - in what ways can we model "total" and "complete" structures. So, because I figure that programming is at least (in some measure) a matter of entities, of objects persisting over time (either the patterns of bits which constitute software or the notional "objects", control structures and so on of the coding end of things) and as such is a matter of ontology. I had a terrible time at University attempting to use concepts from complexity theory, chaos theory and so on (in a non-specialist sense) to conceptualising social systems, psychological systems and philosophical models in and with which to model such structures. Had I been in Germany, I would have had every opportunity - but universities tend to maintain territorial intellectualisms. (The same undoubtedly occurs in computer science (?)) I have studied martial arts practise and philosophy for many years, so an interest in non-linear strategies is aquired. > > > > I have been trying to find a way to elaborate what is in my mind's > eye. Thus > > ADA has been useful. > > In general, that's true. Ada is a very good language for constructing > large > systems, and very good at exactly capturing the nature of an > abstraction > (because of its very rich type facility). I do not think that I have the comprehension of programming yet to know whether or not ADA95 will let me do what I would like to. The ability to cast one's own types is certainly appealing to me, from what I have seen of other languages. Ada appears to make the matter so very much less cryptic than Java, for instance... for a novice's eyes anyway. > > > > But as it seems to me as though I may be the "idiot" referred to > earlier. I > > don't think I should say anymore. > > I don't think anyone is calling you an idiot. The only reference to > "idiots" that I can recall was by me, and I was referring to the > members of > the Kansas State Board of Education who voted against teaching > Darwin's > Theory of Evolution in Biology class. OK. Perhaps the Board of Education in Kansas has done something unique and proven by their own mental prowess that retrograde evolution is in fact possible. We have people like that here... > > > > Inasfar as simulation is concerned - I desire to employ the systems > theory in > > battlefield simulation. > > I apply systems theory to the construction of software systems too. > It > seems we have a lot in common! > > > As I am an idiot, I don't suppose I ever will and I am sad that I > have been > > deleted from this group every time I have posted. > > No, you are not an idiot, nor is anyone deleting your posts. It is very difficult to know when one is progressing with this language. I try to learn about four different languages and when I find one stumps me I turn to another for a while. For instance, I recently began looking into C++ and found that having spent some time with Java texts and manuals had already opened the concepts up for me. Also, that spending time in ADA let me understand more easily the dot notation call to procedures or function/methods elsewhere. Anyway, having said that I probably got it wrong and I should say - I was originally studying to be an academic philosopher but things went off that path. As things do. So, I hoped that I could discuss issues with people such as yourselves. Issues pertaining to structure and system. But it is difficult to insert myself conversationally because the nature of conversation is so specialised and cryptic to the novice... > > > Please don't leave the group. I, and I'm sure others, welcome your > contributions and questions on comp.lang.ada. > > > G > > Matt Thanks Matt. What you said about the ability of ADA to capture abstraction through its type facility - that is why I am more attracted to Ada. I have a certain mental construct which has been bouncing around my neuronal architecture for several years and which I am attempting to find expression for. It is related to cybernetics, too, I suppose inasmuch as the system is composed of elements which support the replication of themselves and through them the global structure. I have to think this out a bit because I am rusty in elaborating these things. I guess, and it is all but impossible (for now) to explain the system I will eventually attempt to simulate/model with ada (as perhaps a seed for more practical enterprises, if I am very lucky), well... I looked into the philosophy of space, time, of spacetime and anamorphic (i.e. relativistic) distortions of such. What fascinated me was that what may be happening in biological, cosmological (and several other -"logicals") systems is that at the level of sequence and time it is the replication of a process, not of purely (or purely of) static elements within a system of process. The process which is being replicated is precisely the process of replication itself. Now, there may be a variety of symmetries to such things, symmetry in an abstract sense (much as electron may rotate through 720 degrees before returning to its start point, implying a dimensional depth of a counter-intuitive nature). The symmetry involved is the mental image I think will be something to which Ada could be applied for modelling and simulation. Not as a fundamental system, but an extension of existing systems. Which may be all that we ever do anyway, extend, modify and even the Kansas Board of Education is but an example of the progressive sedimentation of complexity in biological, cosmological and other systems... But I am not very good at explaining this. I don't even know if I can model this mental image. Something like Menger's sponge meets a logarithmic spiral and onto the spiral is mapped an accleration or otherwise increase in complexity. There is a subtle dimensional depth though, drawing this spiral around a conical shape. The central axis of the conical structure is itself no less than precisely the same spiral running orthogonal to the cone. I just had a gut feeling about this system. I read all the popular literature from Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach and onwards. Are there ways within software systems to model structures which on every scale of magnification replicate themselves ? I do not mean purely materially, say as Cantor's dust and it's (infinite) structure might represent, but in the sense that the process of replication is itself what is replicated at every scale of magnitude. I just had a feeling that it may be possible to represent this in Ada. Also... because I am interdisciplinary... it may turn out to be not a computer-reprsentable concept and fall through as a horrendously complex social, psychological theory. I just have a hunch... and simulation is a current obsession of mine. So... I have questions to ask anyone here who will answer... because I AM a novice. It is NOT off subject because I am trying to determine how to use Ada for a theoretical abstraction.... for modelling that abstraction and then eventually to employ the structure as a base structure for simulation. I enjoy the challenge and the learning curve of this fascinating language. I suppose that one must build such systems from the ground up in Ada. So, I must be looking at years of learning. -Graeme A wise man once said that :" 'tis better to keep one's mouth shut and appear the fool than open it and remove all doubt." I may have now achieved the latter twice in one day. Impressive. I could say more... but I have been vociferous enough as is. :-)