Visual Basic for Quantum Computers
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http://www.cio-today.com/article/index.php?story_id=123003YLY6TO
Microsoft announced that it has developed a new programming language designed to not only run on current computers but on the most advanced machines of the future: quantum computers.
Microsoft said its new quantum computing language, which has yet to be named, is "deeply integrated" into its Visual Basic development environment
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@el_heffe It's part of the anti-Skynet protocols. All advanced languages must be moronic to prevent computers from taking over--using them causes them digital pain.
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Reposts in case one goes down:
http://liriklagoe.com/news/Visual-Basic-Programming-Language-Help-For-Students/
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Option Base [0,1]
will be a thing then.
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@arantor It's alright as long as you can assign it
FILE_NOT_FOUND
.
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@el_heffe BTW: Near the end they mention "deeply integrated into Visual Studio" which they took from the official Microsoft press release.
It sounds like the "Visual Basic" line is just a cock-up by the CIO Today editors, though not surprising for a website covering management material.
Notice how Ars Technica mentions no such thing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-quantum-toolkit/
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@jbert said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@el_heffe BTW: Near the end they mention "deeply integrated into Visual Studio" which they took from the official Microsoft press release.
It sounds like the "Visual Basic" line is just a cock-up by the CIO Today editors, though not surprising for a website covering management material.
Notice how Ars Technica mentions no such thing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-quantum-toolkit/
That does make more sense. Journalists are notoriously prone to screwing up even basic things.
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@jbert said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@el_heffe BTW: Near the end they mention "deeply integrated into Visual Studio" which they took from the official Microsoft press release.
It sounds like the "Visual Basic" line is just a cock-up by the CIO Today editors, though not surprising for a website covering management material.
Notice how Ars Technica mentions no such thing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-quantum-toolkit/
It appears that CIO Today noticed their mistake and edited the story. I copied the line directly from their story and it said Visual Basic, now it says Visual Studio, same as the original Microsoft press release.
Filed Under: Copy/Paste how does it work
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@benjamin-hall said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@el_heffe It's part of the anti-Skynet protocols. All advanced languages must be moronic to prevent computers from taking over--using them causes them digital pain.
Keeping the spirit alive, eh?
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@jbert said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@arantor It's alright as long as you can assign it
FILE_NOT_FOUND
.Dammit, I came here specifically to make that joke.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
Option Base [0,1]
will be a thing then.Strictly, it'll need to use complex numbers, so
Option Base 0.0+1.0i
. Unless you use something to change the name of the imaginary multiplier toj
, which would be required for working with engineering codes.
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@el_heffe Apparently someone told them:
Is it anyone we know?
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@dkf this is Visual Basic, a language which for a number of years featured a type system as amazing as PHP's, where everything could be Variants, and adjusted at runtime. I assumed that such a thing as imaginary or non imaginary would be simultaneously resolved and not resolved at runtime following language precedent.
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@arantor It still does.
Dim
ensioning your variables asObject
or usingOption Strict Off
turns off all compile-time type checking and makes everything late-bound and dynamic dispatch. Code that does this should be shot on sight, but the option is still there.
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@twelvebaud said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
Coders that do
esthis should be shot on sight, but the option is still there; this is not optional.FTFY
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@jbert said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@el_heffe Apparently someone told them:
Is it anyone we know?
@vcsjones looks like not . But it might be @DoctorJones ? (also probably not)
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@jbert said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@el_heffe Apparently someone told them:
Is it anyone we know?
Not me.
I would have asked them where I could get a copy of the Visual Basic development environment.
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@benjamin-hall said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
That does make more sense. Journalists are notoriously prone to screwing up even basic things.
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@xaade said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
I would have asked them where I could get a copy of the Visual Basic development environment.
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@tsaukpaetra said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@vcsjones looks like not . But it might be @DoctorJones ? (also probably not)
Nope, not me. VcsJones doesn't sound anywhere near as good a DoctorJones ;-)
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
Option Base [0,1]
will be a thing then.I choose to interpret this as the equivalent mathematical notation, which represents "the entire interval of real numbers between 0 and 1 inclusive". Seems oddly appropriate for quantum computing.
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@scarlet_manuka :thatsthejoke.svg:
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@arantor Ah, a on me then; I assumed it was intended as an array.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
I assumed it was intended as an array.
That would also make sense for a quantum basis.
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@dkf said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@scarlet_manuka said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
I assumed it was intended as an array.
That would also make sense for a quantum basis.
Yes; my thought process was basically "An array, huh? You know what would be even more fun?"
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@scarlet_manuka Visual Basic syntax uses parentheses rather than brackets ;)
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@arantor True, and something I should have remembered. I concede entirely.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@arantor True, and something I should have remembered. I concede entirely.
Given that it is a language we have all collectively tried to blot out of our memory due to the horrors we've seen inflicted with it, totally understandable.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@scarlet_manuka said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@arantor True, and something I should have remembered. I concede entirely.
Given that it is a language we have all collectively tried to blot out of our memory due to the horrors we've seen inflicted with it, totally understandable.
I thought that was PHP.
Filed under: TR
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@kt_ PHP doesn't have an Option Base instruction because it starts at 0 like true programming languages should, and it's trying to fix some of the rest of its WTF. Something that VB only really managed when it became a different syntax on top of .NET rather than its original self.
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@arantor It's hard to rationalise a language when you're trying to keep it compatible with generations of Spectate_Swamp style coding.
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@scarlet_manuka said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@arantor It's hard to rationalise a language when you're trying to keep it compatible with generations of Spectate_Swamp style coding.
PHP is trying.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@kt_ PHP doesn't have an Option Base instruction because it starts at 0 like true programming languages should, and it's trying to fix some of the rest of its WTF. Something that VB only really managed when it became a different syntax on top of .NET rather than its original self.
I think that Option Base is a great feature. Eliminate arguments by letting the developer choose.
And who could forget the endless array of fun that On Error Resume Next brings.
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@maciejasjmj no, no it's actually trying to improve. It's even acquiring some sense of type strictness now! By the Unix epochalycapse, it might even resemble a real language.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@maciejasjmj no, no it's actually trying to improve. It's even acquiring some sense of type strictness now! By the Unix epochalycapse, it might even resemble a real language.
This I did not know. At what point will
null
no longer be simultaneously less than -1 and equal to 0?
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@pie_flavor it's only ever equal to 0 if you do loose comparison, in the same way that '123abc' is equal to 123. Strict comparison, it's not at all.
Less than -1 is the product of, again, loose comparison doing strange things.
In answer to your question, probably shortly after the Epochalypse, because backwards compatibility breakage will no doubt ensue due to morons doing things they shouldn't.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@pie_flavor it's only ever equal to 0 if you do loose comparison, in the same way that '123abc' is equal to 123. Strict comparison, it's not at all.
Less than -1 is the product of, again, loose comparison doing strange things.
In answer to your question, probably shortly after the Epochalypse, because backwards compatibility breakage will no doubt ensue due to morons doing things they shouldn't.
If the basic comparative operators such as < and == are not remotely consistent, then they are fundamentally useless. When "123abc" is no longer equal to 123, that is when I will consider moving PHP up from the 'worst language in existence' spot.
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@pie_flavor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
If the basic comparative operators such as < and == are not remotely consistent, then they are fundamentally useless. When "123abc" is no longer equal to 123, that is when I will consider moving PHP up from the 'worst language in existence' spot.
'123abc' == 123 -> true
'123abc' === 123 -> falseBut to realistically actually use that stuff in practice works less well than you'd think given that everything that comes in via GET or POST is a string, and everything that comes from MySQL is a string (even the numeric columns) so if you want to really do the proper type strictness, you have to remember to cast everything yourself because the outside world is already disjointed.
The worst part is that PHP cannot - and should not - attempt to fix the GET/POST stuff for you, though it could conceivably do it against SQL query results (though I don't know if the protocol for MySQL itself actually returns data type alongside the data it's sending back so this one might not be PHP's fault)
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
But to realistically actually use that stuff in practice works less well than you'd think given that everything that comes in via GET or POST is a string
Maybe you should de-serialize your data before starting to do work with it? Seriously, that's just like saying that comparisons of ints are useless in C because files only contain bytes not ints...
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@ixvedeusi That's not even deserialising. Literally, the HTTP spec passes everything as a string by design. Let's tear up HTTP and invent a new one, shall we?
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@ixvedeusi That's not even deserialising. Literally, the HTTP spec passes everything as a string by design. Let's tear up HTTP and invent a new one, shall we?
Of course it does, it passes you serialized data. What else did you expect it to do? As I said, the C file I/O functions also pass everything as chars by design. In your code, you de-serialize it and then you work with it.
Now the problem with the HTTP spec is that it's a mess to find out how the data is serialized (i. e. what character encoding).
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
'123abc' == 123 -> true
'123abc' === 123 -> falseBut to realistically actually use that stuff in practice works less well
Fucking hell.
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@mrl == is loose comparison which means it type juggles. === is strict comparison. But given the incoming data will almost certainly be stringly typed on some level, this is actually not the most ridiculous thing. It's pretty close, but it's not entirely without logic even putting aside the 'trying to be nice to beginners' vibe.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@mrl == is loose comparison which means it type juggles. === is strict comparison. But given the incoming data will almost certainly be stringly typed on some level, this is actually not the most ridiculous thing. It's pretty close, but it's not entirely without logic even putting aside the 'trying to be nice to beginners' vibe.
Yes, I understand that and I stand by my opinion: fucking hell.
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@mrl welcome to what web programming looks like, where it's strings all the fucking way down because HTTP makes it so.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
@mrl welcome to what web programming looks like, where it's strings all the fucking way down because HTTP makes it so.
Strange, I do web apps all the time and have no trouble with comparisons. ASP .Net must wield some unholy powers.
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@mrl so you get things from GET and POST? At what point do you tell ASP.NET whether to treat things as numbers? Because somewhere along the line, either it must make an inference that something is a number or it must be explicitly told that something is a number.
And it must be ASP.NET doing it because HTTP explicitly doesn't care.
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@arantor said in Visual Basic for Quantum Computers:
Because somewhere along the line, either it must make an inference that something is a number or it must be explicitly told that something is a number.
Yep (specifically, it's told in the model). How does that explain the necessity of PHP doing loose-typed comparisons?
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@maciejasjmj it's not a necessity per se, more a logical convenience for people who don't understand what this means.
Imagine: page.php?something=1
if ($_GET['something'] == 1) { // do something }
A beginner would do this and then be confused when it didn't work as expected because it wouldn't occur to them to write it:
if ($_GET['something'] == '1') { // do something }
which would occur to us, but we're not the people PHP was originally aimed at.
That and the fact PHP doesn't have any kind of model about the data it's working with, so everything it gets is a string (or possibly an array if you do file.php?thing[]=1&thing[]=2)