SysRPL, UserRPL and good, old, plain RPN Message #11 Posted by Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil) on 30 June 2003, 12:33 p.m., in response to message #9 by Erik Ehrling (Sweden)
Hello Erik, guys;
If you allow me to add a few words to your good words, let me also tell you that I liked them very much. Our point of view over some subjects matches in many aspects.
The "hidden" SysRPL/machine code, at least to the average user (*), allows good and bad consequences. As one of our contributors mentioned it well, when he needs some application that already exists as downloadable library, he simply uses it and does not care much about its source code. In fact, we do it when using internal resources: SIN, SQRT, SOLVE, etc. are internally coded and we use them as well, no further inspection.
In other hand, when those of us who want to go further and find "hidden" secrets claiming to be disclosed, then there's no such well locked secret that human mind cannot reveal. It becomes a matter of honor being able to use them and show how deep one can go into a highly dense O.S.
We, poor mortals, can only dare dreaming of having the chance to follow these guys. I'm one of these who dare dreaming of spare time to delve into RPL and Saturn assembly language secrets. When I believe I'll have a few hours to open the door and look carefully inside, some sort of "life call" rings the bell. The world is ours when we are younger, but when we are aged, there are always guys younger than us to claim its possession. Life cycle, no way out...
Oops! Off topic... keeping track... O.K.!
I believe in widely spread documentation. Maybe I'm wrong, but amongst the best calculators (equipments in general, any brand), the most successful are the best documented ones: TI58/59, HP41, HP71, HP48, TI8x series and others as well. Particularly the HP71 that followed the "open architecture" philosophy since its introduction. I remember it well, anyone I knew that was acquainted to HP "restricted architecture policy" was taken by surprise when knowing HP granted access to the HP71 internals documentation.
That's what I believe would help any portable computing device to be successful: flexible, powerful, user selectable O.S. and related algorithms, CPU with compatible, top performance and available, not restricted documentation.
If IBM PC® is not a good example, I cannot find another one.
Best regards.
Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil
(*)I know there are ways to view the source code, but most users do not even have the time to list SysRPL programs and try to understand it, mostly if they are on their way to master UserRPL.
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