Symmetry in Languages

This post is about languages and grammars*, and I'll be using examples in a pseudo-BNF notation which looks like the following:

abc ::= ('foo' <bar>) | <baz> | <bar> <baz>

This reads as "An abc is defined as the letters 'foo' followed by a bar, or as a baz, or as a bar followed by a baz."

Consider the Newspeak language from George Orwell's 1984. Part of the grammar would look like the following:

word ::= ('un' <base>) | <base>
emphasised ::= 'plus' <word>
twiceemphasised ::= 'double' <emphasised>
valid ::= <word> | <emphasised> | <twiceemphasised>

Such a grammar allows us to, given the base word "good", say the valid words "good", "ungood", "plusgood", "plusungood", "doubleplusgood" and "doubleplusungood". This is the entire spectrum of "goodness" allowed by Newspeak, which is a purposefully restrictive language.

Now, what happens if we get rid of some of these rules? Let's try getting rid of 'twiceemphasised':

word ::= ('un' <base>) | <base>
emphasised ::= 'plus' <word>
valid ::= <word> | <emphasised>

We reduce the expressiveness, since we now only have one way to emphasise things, there's no level above "plusgood".

Now what if we get rid of "emphasised", but just call it another kind of "word"?

word ::= 'un' <base> | <base> | 'plus' <word>
valid ::= <word>

Now, the definition of "word" contains the use of a "word", which is recursive. What does this mean? Well "plusgood" is now a "word", and we're allowed to write 'plus' in front of "words", so we can say "plusplusgood", "plusplusplusgood" and any other number of new words. We can also say "plusplusungood" along with an infinite number of negatives.

Thus getting rid of rules completely (like "twiceemphasised") reduces what we can say, but by getting rid of distinctions and special cases (like the distinction between "word" and "emphasised") we get a whole new level of expressiveness. In fact, since we can say "plusplusgood" there isn't a need for "doubleplusgood" anymore, it's redundant, so there's no point putting it back in. Also, the idea of "valid" is also redundant, since it's now just the same as a "word", so we can get rid of that too, to reduce our entire grammar (minus the "base" vocabulary of words like "good") to:

word ::= 'un' <base> | <base> | 'plus' <word>

This grammar, even though it only contains two concepts, allows us to say infinitely more than the original grammar that contained five. We can even get rid of the distinction between "base" and "word" by writing it as:

word ::= 'un' <word> | <base> | 'plus' <word>

Now we can say "unungood", "unplusgood", "plusunununununplusplusunplusgood" and infinitely more new words.

Now, where am I going with this? Well, let's consider a bit of grammar for the C programming language:

simpletype ::= 'int' | 'float' | 'double' | 'char'
modifiedtype ::= <simpletype> | ('const' | 'long' | 'signed' | 'unsigned') <modifiedtype>
composite ::= <union> | <struct>
pointer ::= <type> '*'
type ::= <pointer> | <composite> | <modifiedtype>

This is a bit off, but will serve for our purposes. It says, quite simply, that we can make things that have type "int", "float", "double" or "char", or we can modify those types to get things like "unsigned long long int". We can have "unions" and "structs", which are built out of other types, and we can have pointers to any of them (including pointers to pointers (to pointers...)).

Now let's consider a similar thing in Java, which claims to be an "object oriented" language:

basetype ::= 'byte' | 'short' | 'int' | 'long' | 'float' | 'double' | 'boolean' | 'char'
type ::= <object> | <basetype>

Where anybody can create their own kind of "object", for example strings of text, key/value pairs, Web browsers, customers, etc. In the end though, everything in Java ends up being defined via a few things from "basetype".

If we look at the first Object Oriented language, Smalltalk, we can see why I said Java is "object oriented" in quotes:

object

That's it. EVERYTHING in Smalltalk is an object. If you want a number, that's fine since there are number objects. You want a true/false boolean? That's fine since there are true and false objects. No expressiveness has been lost by throwing away the complicated special-cases of languages like C, and by adding "base types" Java has gained no expressiveness over Smalltalk. In fact, by having more special cases we lose expressiveness. For example if we want to write, in pseudocode, a function for the square of something, we can do so in C like so:

int square(int num) {
return num*num;
}

char square(char num) {
return num*num;
}

float square(float num) {
return num*num;
}

double square(double num) {
return num*num;
}

We would also need to take into account the various modified versions, whilst structs and unions can't be squared in a general way. We're also forgetting here that C would complain about multiple function definitions, so we would have to call each function something different (eg. int square_int(int num)), and the obvious issue that some of these number types might not be able to store the result of the multiplication if it's too big (don't get me started on that bollocks). In Java we get a similar thing, although we're allowed multiple functions with the same name since they take different argument types:

int square(int num) {
return num*num;
}

float square(float num) {
return num*num;
}

byte square(byte num) {
return num*num;
}

long square(long num) {
return num*num;
}

short square(short num) {
return num*num;
}

char square(char num) {
return num*num;
}

boolean square(boolean num) {
return num*num;
}

double square(double num) {
return num*num;
}

Object square(Object num) {
return Object*Object;
}

The last case, of Object, won't work since Java has EVEN MORE special cases to do with operators like *, defining them for some kinds of objects and not others. Now, what would we write for Smalltalk?

[:num | ^ num * num]

That's it. Done. Works for everything (for which multiplication is valid).

The nice thing about using objects in this way is that everything stays symmetric, ie. you can treat everything in the same way. This lack of special cases and artificial distinctions means that it's much easier and more intuitive to make systems which handle everything thrown at them. As long as there's a sane fallback in the case of failure, we can leave this function (that one line) alone FOREVER and be confident that it will still work with everything we give it; we don't need to keep fiddling with it as more types are added to the language.

What's more, now that we've got this working function, we can stick it in a library and use it everywhere. We can do the same for branches, via the methods:

foo isTrue: [something run] isFalse: [somethingelse run]

That works for ANY foo, and the two code blocks given are of course examples. We can do the same for iteration:

foo do: [:x | something run using x]

That will work for ANY foo which is iterable. Everything works in the same way, 40 year old code can work with objects written last week, code written last week can work with objects defined 40 years ago.

If you're adding a feature to a language via extra syntax, ask yourself whether you're allowing the expression of something new which was not previously possible, or whether you're just breaking the symmetry between that feature and the entirety of the rest of the language.

To bring this back to where it started, I'm very interested in the development of Newspeak.

* More specifically formally defined languages and grammars, not broken grammars retrofitted to natural languages via the use of duct tape and insistence that the language's users aren't adhering to the 'standard' which is based around the user's use of it anyway.

Learned Helplessness in Computing?

I know I should be revising, seeing that my Atomic and Laser Physics exam is mere hours away, but I ended up on another Wikipedia trek, and came across the article on learned helplessness. Reading through it, I found that I could make many connections with the currently depressing state of computing, and attributing it to the complexity and proprietaryness of software.

Learned helplessness is a much-studied psychological phenomenon, where a subject gives up trying to change their situation. An example cited consists of three groups of dogs; group A is a control group and are put into harnesses and left for the duration of the experiment; groups B and C are put into harnesses but are also given unpleasant electric shocks. Each group B dog has a lever in front of it which does nothing when activated, whereas each group C dog has a lever which turns off the shocks to that dog and one of the group B dogs. The dogs in group C learn that the lever turns off their shocks, and they use it whenever they start to get shocked. Group B dogs, however, learn that their lever does nothing, whilst their shocks seem to stop randomly (remember, each B dog is paired to a C dog's lever, so the B dogs don't know why their shocks stop).

After this stage of the experiment all of the dogs are put into part two. where they are unharnessed in a pen divided in two by a small partition. The half of the floor with a dog on is electrified, whilst the half without is normal. Dogs from groups A and C would hop over the partition, away from the electricity and thus away from the pain. They don't know that the other side's not electrified, but they have a go and find that it's not. The dogs from group B, however, just lie down on the electrified floor and whimper, as they are repeatedly electrocuted. They could hop over the partition, but don't bother trying. These dogs become depressed.

The conclusion of the experiment is that the sense of control is very important. Dogs in group B and group C got exactly the same shocks (since they were both controlled by group C's levers), but only group B got depressed. Essentially, they learned that nothing they did would stop the electricity, it just stopped randomly. They then applied this knowledge to the second situation and took the shocks, rather than trying the new possibility of jumping over the divide.

This can be seen in people, where some parents can end up neglecting their babies since they 'learn' that the child doesn't stop crying whether they give it attention or not, and thus ignore it, thinking they are helpless to stop its cries.

The psychological explanation for this is that the depressed subjects, in an attempt to rationalise the seemingly random lack of control, think of it as an inevitability ("Babies cry"), blame themselves ("I'm making it cry") and think of it as pervasive ("I'm a bad parent"). This learned helplessness digs a psychological hole which is notoriously difficult to break out of, and even causes feedback loops, for example a neglected child will cry more and have more problems than that of an attentive parent, thus reinforcing the "I'm a bad parent" and "I'm making it cry" beliefs. In fact, even knowledge of learned helplessness can make things worse, since it can act as a confirmation of the helplessness ("You've told yourself that you're helpless when you're actually not." "See? I TOLD you I was a bad parent!") and others can end up blaming the condition for things rather than the person ("It's not your fault that your baby's ill, you've learned to be helpless at looking after it." "Yes, you should probably take it away since I'm too learned-helpless to look after it.")

So, aside from knowing more being awesome, how does this apply to anything I'm interested in? Well I couldn't stop contrasting the explanations with computing. The dominant computing platform these days is Microsoft Windows which, although all software has bugs, seems to be full of them. A lot of these bugs are user interface related, where the required action to achieve the desired task is non-obvious, or a seemingly obvious action produces an unexpected result (which includes 'crashes', where a program disappears without the user telling it to). Although anyone more involved in software development would view these as bugs in the software which should be reported and fixed, frequently less technical users (which is the vast majority) view such things as inevitable ("Computers crash"), as their fault ("I made it crash") and pervasive ("I'm bad with computers"). Just look at the currently running adverts for the Which? PC Guide: A bunch of regular people saying how their computers keep messing up, and then an offer of a guide to show them how it's all their fault because they're doing it wrong.

Since I write software, I would say that the Which? PC Guide is a complete hack: It's fixing something in the wrong place. A broken piece of software should not be fixed by telling each and every user how to work around the broken bits, the software should be fixed so that nobody ever experiences those issues again. However, since it's proprietary software, nobody is allowed to fix it other than Microsoft (although there are numerous other hacks to work around the broken bits, some of which have created an entire industry, such as firewalls, anti-virus/spyware/adware programs, etc.).

The majority of computer users, however, do not think like me, since I am a group C dog: I know how to fix things. In fact, in human experiments into learned helplessness, it was found that people could concentrate more and solve problems more quickly in the presence of an annoying and distracting noise if they had a button which could turn it off, than those subjected to the noise without such a button, EVEN WHEN THE BUTTON WASN'T PRESSED. So on a Free Software system, where I know that it is possible for me to fix something if I truly wanted to, I don't get depressed, however on a proprietary system I frequently get annoyed, angry, irritated, etc. when the software behaves in undesirable ways.

For example, clicking a link that says "Download this program" in Idiot Exploiter 8 doesn't download the program, it just gives an subtle message under the toolbar that Internet Explorer has "protected" me by preventing the program from downloading and that I should click it to change that, and when clicked presents a menu with the option to download the program (how is this any different to the previous promise of a download?), which when clicked brings up a box asking if I want to save the program or run it, so I click run and when it's downloaded I get a warning saying that programs can do stuff to the computer, do I want to run it? I click run again (how is this any different to the previous promise of running the program?) and Windows pops up a message saying that the program is doing stuff, do I want to allow it to continue? I press continue an FINALLY get the the "first step" of the installer.

On Debian I could give a similar example that I can't get the Gdebi package installer to work, which means that I have to save packages and install them with the command "dpkg -i package_filename.deb", which can result in a broken setup if the newly installed package depends on other stuff, which means I need to install the stuff to fix it with "apt-get -f install" and press "y" to confirm it. This may seem annoying, but I know that if I wanted to fix it badly enough then I could, and would even be encouraged to do so (afterall, Gdebi works perfectly well in Ubuntu).

Whenever my wireless card messes up on Debian, on the other hand, I get incredibly frustrated and annoyed, and often need to walk away from my laptop and have a break, since I feel completely powerless over it. The wireless firmware I use is proprietary, since Broadcom don't tell anyone the language that their wifi chips speak (although clean-room reverse engineering of a Free Software replacement in Italy seems to be showing some promise), so even though I'm running completely Free Software applications on a Free Software kernel of Free Software drivers (in my case Linux), and can look at the code at any time to see what it's doing and possibly fix any problems, when it comes to my wireless card the disconnects are seemingly random, as I have no way of inspecting the firmware since it is proprietary. I therefore feel helpless to stop it disconnecting, and can't remedy the situation in any way other than disabling the Wifi, unloading the driver, reloading the driver, enabling the Wifi and trying to reconnect. If that doesn't work then all I can do is to try it again. In fact, I've even written a little script which does all of that whenever I run "restart-wireless". It's so bad that the developers of NetworkManager, the (currently) best network control system on Linux, do the same thing. If network manager's running and I get disconnected then I see the wireless network icon disappear and the wifi LED turn off. After a few seconds the Wifi LED comes back on, the Wifi icon comes back and it tries to connect. If it doesn't work then it happens again. It's depressing.

So there's one reason I think computing is in the sorry state that it is, people are being conditioned to think that "computers crash" (which conveniently keeps the cost of quality control down), that they aren't "using them properly" (which conveniently keeps the costs of having good designers down) and that they're destined to always be "clueless with everything computer-related" (which conveniently keeps people upgrading stuff they don't need to on the advice of the 'experts' selling the upgrades). This was caused by the proprietary software world, since with Free Software the volunteers, users, developers, companies and organisations which make and sell it actively encourage all users to "hop the partition" and 'scratch their own itches', since it results in less work and more Free software for those doing the encouraging. Whether it was intentional or not is debatable (never assign to malice that which can be explained by (in?)competance).

This unfortunately means that people like my Mum have some kind of internal off switch which is activated by the word "computer", so that when things like the broadband packages they are paying for are discussed with a sentence like "This one has a limit on how much we can do per month, so they'll charge more if we go over it, but this one doesn't" are met with a response such as "Well you know I don't understand these things" (which is the exact same sentence used for every attempt at explaining something, no matter how basic). It makes me *REALLY* frustrated when people don't bother to apply mentals skills which even five year olds possess, simply because they know computers are involved. Discuss the exact same thing with phone contracts, or even the price of meat per kilo, and they'll readily discuss the merits of each option, and even go into the small print, but with computers they've learned to be helpless, and thus think they have no control over anything related, and feel much more comfortable being extorted by monthly bills twice the size of what they could have, where the value calculations are worked out by someone else, than they do with having to confront some computer-related thinking for a few minutes.

Another big cause of computer-helplessness is a genuine problem with computing today, Free Software or not. Empirical evidence does say that just the presence of control, whether or not it is used, is the important bit (like my access to the source code for everything I use), but it's still a chore to actually make use of that control.

As an example, a few years ago the Nautilus file manager changed so that icons got bounding boxes. This meant that before the change if I clicked in a transparent corner of a circular icon then nothing would get selected, but after the change the circular icon would be selected because I'd clicked within the bounding box. This is a good thing usability-wise, but I was rather annoyed with the way it interfered with my specific setup. I had cut out images and assigned them as icons to the various folders in my Home folder, stretched them rather large and arranged them manually so that they filled the Nautilus window without overlapping, so that clicking the visible parts would select the icon, whilst clicking on a transparent part would 'fall through' and select one visible below. I was very proud of this, and it had taken quite a while to do. Then, after an update, all of the icons got bounding boxes and thus clicks in transparent areas no longer fell through, making selecting and double-clicking things unusable. I had to make all of the icons small again, and arrange them in a grid, destroying the previous awesomeness. I took it upon myself a few months ago to bring back the no-bounding-box Nautilus as a well-buried option, so I got the source code to the most recent version of Nautilus and looked through the version control history to find out when the change was made which added the bounding boxes (I think this is where it changed http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/nautilus?view=revision&revision=9123 ) and replaced that section in the latest code with the old code, and it worked. However, this took a few days, since I've done very little C programming and never used GObject with C before, and I didn't even have to write any code (it was just copypasta). If I want to fix every bug I find it would take an intractable amount of time, even though I can fix any bug I want to individually.

There looks to be some promising stuff going on to rectify this at the Viewpoints Research Institute, an organisation funded by the US government with awesome Computer Scientists like Alan Kay. One of their aims is to "reinvent" computing, which basically involves making (yet another) computer system, but one which is as understandable (and hence small) as possible. They're aiming for a complete, working system in under 20,000 lines of code (for comparison, Windows has around 40,000,000), and have got some nice tools like their "Combined Object Lambda Architecture" programming system, which aims to be written in itself and be able to compile down as far as FPGAs (ie. rewiring the microchips themselves to represent the program), and OMeta which allows very compact and easy to understand programming language implementations (for example they have an almost-complete (missing "try"/"catch" and "with") Javascript interpreter which is only 177 lines of code), which, like their COLA, is written in itself. This allows COLA-based implementations of other languages to make their system, with new languages so easy to define that each part can be made in a tailor-made language, even being redefined in places where it makes things more comprehensible.

Hopefully having more understandable and approachable code will mean it is easier to find and fix bugs, so that nobody has to experience them for long. It might also help to reduce the number of people who teach themselves to be helpless at computing, although as for the ones who are already learned-helpless it will take a lot of effort on their part to break out of it, which won't be helped by proprietary companies trying to dress up their shit code as some kind of magical snake oil which cannot be obtained from anywhere else, or be written by mere mortals (which GNU set out to disprove with UNIX and has done a pretty fine job), and the media displaying binary all over the place whenever the internals of computers is mentioned.

OK, I think I should carry on revising now, as I've gone off on a bit of a rant, but damn it my blog's still not boring or crap! :P

Retarded = backwards

It seems that our literally retarded government is mulling over the idea of a "broadband tax" of 20 quid per year for everyone with broadband (which is actually everyone in the country, since they also want universal broadband access) which will be given to the "music industry" and the "film industry".

With this in mind, perhaps now is the time we can finally recover our failing Ice House economy with Ice House taxes on all fridges? Our TV channels and film studios can receive tax on VHS tapes and DVDs? Our dwindling equine propulsion industry could benefit from a tax on all internal combustion engines, electric motors, petrol and diesel. Our whale oil industry could benefit from a tax on light bulbs, flourescent tubes and LEDs. The typewriter industry could have a tax on all computer sales, as can gramophone makers. Whilst we're at it, why not charge for Wikipedia and give all of the proceeds to the desperate Encyclopedia Britannica?

In fact, to encourage these ideas I propose that everyone who uses a fridge, a video or DVD player, any form of engine-powered travel, electric lighting or computer should be labeled as a criminal, since it is completely within my rights to make such accusations when there is no legal basis at all for it. Actually, criminal is too light a word, afterall some crimes are legitimate in certain circumstances when they're the lesser of two evils. The label I propose therefore must be something that's never legitimate, so that juries can have their minds made up for them beforehand rather than having to go through that tedious business of deciding guilt (which, after all that effort, might not even get me the result I want!). They should be called some kind of word which implies rape, murder and that sort of thing... how about serial killer? Yeah, that works. OK, now on with the spreading of my message with twisted logic, brainwashing and of course my all time favourite, the outright lie.

Here's one to get started with:

"You wouldn't strangle a toddler

You wouldn't stab a pregnant woman in the womb

Refridgeration is murder

Murder is a crime

Don't let the serial killers get away with it

Copyright the Respected Icehouse Association of America"

Or how about a more subtle brainwashing?

"He's the, kind of man that makes edits in-place,

He kills post men and shits on their face,

He wanks in the sandwiches you leave in the icebox,

He makes documents using a word processor, what a fucking cock,

He's a, Nerdy Nigel, a Nerdy Nigel

Nerdy Nigel word processes his documents

(Copyright the British Typewritographic Institute)"

Or, perhaps, we should actually EMBRACE technological innovation? ESPECIALLY innovation which looks set to destroy the crumbling monopolies of the 20th century's "music industry" (ie. the few rich sods who decide that you don't want to listen to the vast majority of bands and thus give millions to Britney Spears whilst decent acts end up working in McDonalds) and "film industry" (ie. the few rich sods who decide that potentially good, inventive ideas are too risky to back compared to more sequels of the same old shit). Giving them such a "tax" is not only COMPLETELY disruptive to the economy, but offers NEGATIVE incentive for them to do stuff, since their income could come straight from the tax without wasting any money doing any of that 'making stuff' kerfuffle.

Labour need a firm kick to the teeth for all of the bullshit they're shovelling over us. They're as conservative as the Conservatives, leaving the Liberal Democrats as the only viable way out (and that's still rather tenuous). The problem with the Lib Dems is that they don't seem to have any morals either, not in a 'Fuck you, I'm in charge' Labour way, but in an 'OK as long as you vote for us' way. I think forming policies specifically to cater to a minority so that they'll vote for you, regardless of how it affects the majority, isn't a particularly good thing (here I'm not using minority in an ethnic sense, but for instance their stance for legalising cannabis. Whilst this is obviously backed wholeheartedly by that minority who abuse cannabis, it's impact on the majority of the population is far from clear cut).

On a side note, I really really really wish that Java dies a quick death. It's a fucking terrible language, restrictive, verbose, full of boilerplate bollocks, full of glaring errors which, for some ungodly reason, are standard, making every Java environment broken (either in the sense that they're nonstandard but work properly, or they follow the standard but are full of fucking retarded shit like 2147483647 + 1 = -2147483648 (which *IS* an error, as anyone over the age of about 5 can tell you)). Object oriented my arse. What the hell are these "base types" then? What about methods? What about classes? Fuck off Java.

The End