[Verba] Meeting summary

[Stuart D. Gathman]

We are still interested in ternary arithmetic.  The wooden ternary
calculator of Thomas Fowler can be seen here:

http://www.mortati.com/glusker/fowler/gallery.htm

it is commemorated in a stained glass window.

The Russians built 50 "Setun" computers, which were ternary:

http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/PHOTOS/setun-1.html
http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm

Until 30 years ago, most programmers were women.  A Russian programmer:

http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/PHOTOS/5E76B.html

I stated that unlike human languages, computer languages were unambiguous,
(although compiled languages like C have "undefined" constructs to allow
greater efficiency after translation).  The question, "Why then do 
computer programs have bugs?" led to a brief discussion of
logical positivism and semantic holism - the idea being that errors
can occur in the speaker, hearer, or transmission.  There may be only
one correct interpretation of a program, but a human reader doesn't always
interpret it correctly.  (And sometimes compilers or interpreters have
bugs also.)

Ironically, we are learning with the Python language, and there is a British
comedy team called "Monty Python".  And there is a tutorial on logical
positivism and semantic holism based on Python (Monty Python, that is):

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/python.htm

Jillian then took the keyboard, and with some prompting entered a 
program for converting numbers to binary notation.  Changing this 
to output balanced ternary instead did not require further help:

print "Enter a number."
n = input()
b = n
s = []
while b > 0:
  c = "012"[b%3]
  print s,c,b
  s.append(c)
  b = b/3
s.reverse()
print "".join (s)

We left with one idea for outputting balanced ternary.  However, the
suggested idea was not a good one.  Instead, the existing ternary
program can output balance ternary by adding a single line.  I'll
give you a few days to think about it, then post my answer. ;-)

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.