AKMA’s Random Thoughts

My own experience over the years with meeting on-line folk in real life has been consistently pleasant. I haven't met that many people, but more than I would have imagined -- mostly folk from an on-line discussion group that I've participated in over the years.

The characteristics that make you like somebody on-line are still there when you meet them in person. But in real life, you see more of them.

It's sort of like listening to voices on the radio, something nobody does anymore. Or only knowing someone only through telephone conversations (before phones became digital cameras). In your imagination, you picture what they look like. It can be a little jarring when reality offers a different physical look than you imagined. But your brain adapts, re-arranging that internal image to now match what you are seeing.

Another interesting question about blogging is what does it do to users as individuals. In other words, does we change when we blog? I am not just talking about our diction or choice of words, but rather the way we think and interact with others.

Since the Heap has no definite rules as to where it will create space for you, there must be some way of figuring out where your new space is. And the answer is, simply enough, addressing. When you create new space in the heap to hold your data, you get back an address that tells you where your new space is, so your bits can move in. This address is called a Pointer, and it's really just a hexadecimal number that points to a location in the heap. Since it's really just a number, it can be stored quite nicely into a variable.

The most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.

We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.

We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.

We can see an example of this in our code we've written so far. In each function's block, we declare variables that hold our data. When each function ends, the variables within are disposed of, and the space they were using is given back to the computer to use. The variables live in the blocks of conditionals and loops we write, but they don't cascade into functions we call, because those aren't sub-blocks, but different sections of code entirely. Every variable we've written has a well-defined lifetime of one function.