Richmond, this was your last post to this thread before mine. > My current version is here: > https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ja47l87gg87sn0q/AAAIj99kEQVOb8ev3jz8C5ORa?dl=0 > > File : TA.zip > play with it, rip it to pieces, improve it: go on, I dare you :) > > Richmond.
So I downloaded this stack and wrote a script that implemented three ideas, two by other LCoders, one by me. Because you graciously ignored these ideas, I was simply curious about their effects on speed and selectivity (by using trueWords). I didn't play with your stack, I didn't rip it into pieces, but somehow improved it a bit in the sense of using effectively some available features of LC 7. It was no dare, I had fun. And you had obviously fun too, what a great speech! Who dares wins, you --- and me. Hermann p.s. Shouldn't the opening of your speech read "I was _achieved_"? ;-) Richmond wrote: > I am achieving what I initially set out to achieve, and with far less > code than yours, so have no intention > of changing anything. > > I, also, am a lucky sort of chap insofar as I don't really mind that > much if my stack takes 3 days to work its way > through a corpus . . . I can go and do some teaching, read a book, cook > some food, go for a bike ride, talk to my wife, > play with my cats, and so on. > > That has ALWAYS been my approach to programming for one simple reason: > working every holiday for very many years indeed on a farm > on an island I had to sort out broken bailers, tractors and so on. > > Now "proper" spares had to come, on a ferry, at a vast transportation > overhead, from the mainland of Scotland. We could not afford > that, so we fossicked (lovely verb) for whatever would do the job in the > 'graveyard' of broken tractors, cars, stuff we had picked up from the > local dump, and so on. Every single time we got our accursed bailer to > bail the straw and the hay, we got the cotter pins we needed to > connect the tractor to the plough, harrow, muck-spreader or whatever; > never very elegant, but they worked. In fact my younger son was on that > farm just 8 days ago and was shown some of my repair work by the > farmer's son (the farmer is long dead); still functional after 25 years. > > I have, just, worked out a way to colourise the items I want, and while, > churning through some socking great corpus that would take days, I only > need it to colourise the sentences the previous routine has extracted, > so that won't take that long. > > You, if it really seems such a good idea (and is it?) are more than > welcome to download my stack > > > https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ja47l87gg87sn0q/AAAIj99kEQVOb8ev3jz8C5ORa?dl=0 > File: > TA.zip > > and mess around with the script to your heart's content. > > AND, while we are talking about time-consuming exercises: having put 4 > hours of work into the thing, that seems, already, a bit more than the > thing deserves as I am not interested in winning the Tour de France, > simply extracting some data from a million word corpus with absolutely > no deadline at all unless I choose to impose one. The results MAY get > rolled into a paper my wife and I are THINKING of writing for an > academic conference . . . . > > Almost ALL the stacks I have thrown out into the public domain in the > last 6 months have come back to me with comments about how my code is > clunky, inefficient, and so forth; and I would not doubt for a minute > that that is probably true. > > HOWEVER, as far as I am concerned there is one enormous advantage about > my code above thine, or anybody else's; while thy code and the code of > many others is probably more efficient, more clever and gets things done > more quickly, I don't understand the finer points of it, while I > understand how my code works 100% because it was written by me, follows > my logic, and does what I require it to do. > > It is always entertaining and instructive to see how people react to my > code, and I often learn a lot from their reactions (not least about > human psychology), including new coding tricks - but there always come a > point where the burden of having to plough through other > people's code (reflecting the way their minds work) feels like too much > in comparison from anything I might learn from it. > > ----------------------------------- > > I also suspect that very many people share my interest in getting "the > job done" rather than producing posh code. > > RunRev claim, on their website, that one can learn to code quickly. With > Livecode one can learn how to code RELATIVELY quickly, up > to a certain point; and many people who are not programmers qua > programmers should be attracted by that because they have probably > got other things to do other than JUST program. > > I am, at least to a certain extent, one of those people, as computer > programming is not the hinge on which my life rotates (and this became > extremely clear just recently when I spent 3 weeks driving round Europe > without access to any programming facilities at all), and that is > why I may come across as a bit "rude and crude" to other programmers: > mainly because I have evry little patience with reducing 25 lines > of code to 10 if it will take 12 hours to do that. > > The cow has a breach-presentation calf inside it which will kill her and > the calf within half an hour, to hell with calling the vet, > I'm going to get my right arm up inside her and manipulate the calf so > that it is facing head forwards: > whether I do that the way posh younger sons of the aristocracy learn how > to with their rubber gloves off at agricultural school > or not I just don't care: I am trying to save 2 lives, however I do it. > > ------------------------------------ > > I apologise if that comes across as a rant (well . . . it IS a rant), > but it is something that I feel quite strongly about, and fell needs to > be said > as a necessary corrective, from time to time. > > ----------------------------------- > > One of the things I DO LOVE about LiveCode is that there is room for > "Farmer Richmond" as well as all the "Real Coders", and I do > think that that is something that Runtime Revolution would do well to > tak more tent of in their advertising. > > Richmond. > > _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
