A bit of decorum on these threads please...
Cluso99
Posts: 18,069
We are all very priviledged to be able to be involved with Chips design.
AFAIK no other company has enabled open discussion of ideas on a Chip design.
Frankly, some on this forum are openly criticising Chip, Ken and therefore Parallax for not getting the New Chip out sooner. Some doen't even have a basic understanding of P1.
Many huge companies take many years to get their products out. But rarely do you know the whole storybecause most companies keep designs under wraps for most of the design cycle. As a product nears completion, sometimes features are released to a few special customers under an NDA.
Parallax has done the opposite, with frank and open discussions.
The overall tone of this forum has been unworthy of the privilege we have been given. I have personally learnt so much about chip design that I never knew before.
Please refrain from all the negative posts. If you disagree with something, back it up with real information, not FUD.
Please respect everyone here, but especially our hosts - Chip, Ken and Parallax.
If you don't, then expect the remainder of the design to be done behind closed doors with a select few.
I always try to back my thoughts with real info. Sometimes I fail. That unfortunately this is ahuman failing.
I will start it off by saying if I have offended anyone, then I am extremely sorry. It was not intended. I have made some great friends on this site, most of which I have never met. We have had some fantastic discussions and despite designing and programming system for more than 40 years, I have learnt so much. There is always something to learn.
AFAIK no other company has enabled open discussion of ideas on a Chip design.
Frankly, some on this forum are openly criticising Chip, Ken and therefore Parallax for not getting the New Chip out sooner. Some doen't even have a basic understanding of P1.
Many huge companies take many years to get their products out. But rarely do you know the whole storybecause most companies keep designs under wraps for most of the design cycle. As a product nears completion, sometimes features are released to a few special customers under an NDA.
Parallax has done the opposite, with frank and open discussions.
The overall tone of this forum has been unworthy of the privilege we have been given. I have personally learnt so much about chip design that I never knew before.
Please refrain from all the negative posts. If you disagree with something, back it up with real information, not FUD.
Please respect everyone here, but especially our hosts - Chip, Ken and Parallax.
If you don't, then expect the remainder of the design to be done behind closed doors with a select few.
I always try to back my thoughts with real info. Sometimes I fail. That unfortunately this is ahuman failing.
I will start it off by saying if I have offended anyone, then I am extremely sorry. It was not intended. I have made some great friends on this site, most of which I have never met. We have had some fantastic discussions and despite designing and programming system for more than 40 years, I have learnt so much. There is always something to learn.
Comments
Take Care,
Ray
Yeah, seconded. Easily. Of course, you are good. Nobody really means it to go badly. I believe that. We just have strong thoughts about it, and those strong thoughts come from the open process, which I feel the same way about.
Agreed, BUT, it has to work both ways. People posting positive views must also be prepared to back up their statements with hard information and be prepared to have that information tested and questioned.
Likewise, if Parallax want a genuinely open discussion they must be prepared to take any (valid) criticism on the chin and respond to it.
From what I have observed Chip invited us to contribute preferences, ideas, solutions, suggestions. Starting from the simple question "more COGs or more RAM?" some years ago.
Suggestions came in their thousands, as we might expect with hindsight, and some of them were worked into the PII design.
The PII grew and grew, every step along the way being just a "trivial" addition.
Eventually it became a monster with a 1000 obscure opcodes that no normal human being would ever comprehend. Essentially unusable. Whilst at the same time requiring it's own power station to run it.
Yes, yes, I'm exaggerating a little there.
Now, you have to admire the cojones of Chip to hit the reset button on that and go back to basics. Or as they say in Finnish "sisu". That thing that you need to have when all the odds are a against you and you need a lot of perseverance to continue. (Think Fins trashing the mighty Russians in the winter war of 1939)
I am guilty of contributing this mess also. Having suggested automatic thread scheduling at some point in the proceedings.
My guess is that things are now on a much more lean and mean track, lessons having been learned along the way.
On a positive note. I'm totally blown away by Chip and Roy's new shared memory arbiter. Has anything like that been done before?
Agreed, and sorry if I ****** anyone off along the way here also.
Heater,
It's not too far different from how some GPUs do things to get more memory bandwidth... They tend to call it a 256bit or 384bit bus, but it's really a bunch of 32bit ones each going to different banks of memory.
The comportment of the posters on this board have been quite restrained. I see nothing out of bounds written by any poster.
Sure there has been criticism of the open design process because of what happened when a bunch of inner circle gurus threw in everything but the kitchen sink and the poor processor died from bloat and overheating like some horrid glutton at a all you can eat buffet. It was quite amusing to watch in the same way a Monty Python skit or Dilbert strip is funny - illustrating the absurdity of people in action.
I'm sorry but you have to have a thick skin and a sense of humor for this sort of stuff.
But it's the price paid when you bring in people with their own agenda and pet ideas. Everything but the kitchen sink gets added and it did.
Seriously, it is.
Ever hear the old joke that a Camel is a horse designed by a committee?
Now some posters see the same thing happening again and made their concerns public given that the same crew who that sunk the last design are busy giving advice again. Other posters bring up issues like commercial viability or even flaws in the Prop architecture. Nothing out of the ordinary nor rude about these aspects being brought up.
They should be unless you just want a echo chamber of fanbois.
And like Brian said if Parallax wants a open board on the design of their new processor they should be able to handle any valid criticism and concerns by the user community. If they can't they can simply put up a forum for insiders and gurus only. That way they will hear only what they want to hear.
I am sure Chip wanted ideas and NOT the bad feelings this has generated. We all have preferences we want to see add to the new chip. But leave it to us it would become very bloated a lot like windows.
I am not the person to even offer an opinion on this chip but I am interested in what happens to it and to Parallax.
I will be quiet now and go back to lurking and watching!!:nerd:
At this point I believe that closing the doors on further discussion to all but a select few would be a reasonable course of action.
Sandy
And, had they done that maybe a month or two ago, its quite likely the insiders would have been the echo chamber that pushed it ahead into production...
No one knows whether that would have been ultimately revenue generating, or a loss.
However, being open and allowing 'negative' postings may have just given Chip/Ken a reality check.
From all the forums I've seen or been on, I have to agree with Rod, this is easily the tamest, and honestly, most lock-step cult of personality one outside of Apple.
If someone wants to interpret that as mean, then I'm not going to waste my time trying to disuade them.
Unless someone is being actually profane, or deliberately being a serial troll, being 'Open' means you have to not only be ready to receive the never-ending fawning accolades, but the occasional gripe or pointing out of failures.
Ken runs a multi-milllion dollar business with 70 employees, and Chip has had people questioning him for almost a decade on the feasbility or not, of the Prop, s/w peripherals, etc.
I happen to think they're both intelligent, and thick-skinned enough to handle anything thrown at them with aplomb. They certainly have so far.
Parallax has an On-Call Mod Squad to hose people down when needed. If they aren't moderating, then its just possible that someone has too thin a skin, or might better be served here.
Or, Parallax can avoid all of this by moving to a closed echo-chamber of its most loyal followers. That'll undoubtedly speed up the decision making....[/Sarcasm]
Suggesting Pandora's hope?
-Phil
There might still be hope if you can get the lid on quickly enough.
How would that happen exactly?
Would the P2 threads and/or sub forum be locked down?
Would "disagreeable" members be locked out / banned from the forum?
Would Chip stop reading these threads.?
Would Ken take Chip's internet connection away?
Would Chip simply stop posting his notifications of progress?
I think none of those things is likely. It would take a major catastrophe to cause any one of them. Conversely it would be a major catastrophe if they happened.
I do agree, decorum on the forum Gentlemen please.
-Phil
I find a bit a decorum here and there is OK occasionally but too much soon get's boring:)
On a more serious note, I agree with Phil about the desirability of keeping the forum "lively." But I have noticed that some people tend to be quite argumentative. And some of those people are the most knowledgeable and experienced among us. I find that regrettable.
I've noticed a tendency to jump on people for just choosing the wrong word and so on. It is not surprising, though, as what interaction I've had with technical people has convinced me that maybe one-third to a half of them are often difficult, to say the least. Well, there's a 5-letter word that starts with 'p' that, in so-called vulgar usage, means "a person regarded as highly unpleasant, especially a male" (www.thefreedictionary.com). I've been a p-word at times, just not on a full-time basis. I still hate it in others, though. But then I'm too sensitive. Anyway, we really do sometimes need thick skins in here. Not having face-to-face contact really exacerbates misunderstandings and misbehavior.
You know, just because you know something or you're right (or the other person is wrong or not being logical based on your version of logic) doesn't mean that you have to be a p-word about it. I think that's one of the things we admire in Chip: although he's quite sharp and accomplished, he's not a p-word about it; quite the opposite.
By the way, I don't think the p-word I'm avoiding is offensive. It perfectly describes the type of person I'm talking about (and which we've likely all been at one time or another). And the mental feeling we experience dealing with p-word types is similar to the unpleasant physical feeling one feels when one impels an appendage on a sharp object, the standard usage of the word. But the dictionary (I checked) doesn't show the meaning I'm using as a standard meaning, but only as a slang/vulgar meaning, hence my self-censorship. Anyway, let's not be a bunch of p-words.
By the way, my reference to being "right" reminds me of a moving scene from an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, in which father and son continue to thrash it out after a strong disagreement over what color to paint Ray's house. This should be an award-winning scene in my opinion. Peter Boyle (Frank, Raymond's father) -- now deceased, so thank God for his lasting contribution -- gives an amazing performance bouncing off the equally exquisite acting of Ray Romano (Raymond, Frank's son). For anyone interested, a link to the full show is below, but the main action of the scene goes from the 17:25 point to the end of the scene at 19:42, with the scene starting at 16:02 (recommended, if you have time).
Everybody Loves Raymond: Frank Paints the House S5E24: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVSPg7dq3wA <
16:02/17:25 -to- 19:42
It's good to be right. But it's not the only thing. Oh, and, like Ray does at the beginning of the scene, it doesn't hurt to humble oneself and say "I'm sorry" on occasion. It's good for the soul and helps us to avoid being p-words in the future. Lastly, I love Frank's line, "Being right is all that matters; everything else is Smile!" Of course, I don't agree with it, but I love how he expressed what he was feeling.
Indeed I would say that "most programmers I have dealt with have been very likeable". In decades of working with all manner of programmers I only recall one being a pain, who coincidently was one of the smartest guys I have ever met. He was the kind of guy who would complain to me "Why do I have to have all these idiots on my team when I have to rewrite everything they do myself to make it work anyway?!". Still, I even managed to get on his good side after some months when he realized that occasionally I know what I'm talking about.
I love a good anecdote, don't you?
@Heater - 10,000 posts coming soon.
First memorable incident was an office chair flying by me as I was about to step into the main corridor of the office. Seems a customer was annoying him by asking about some software he was working on. Customer managed to duck, but after that customers were not allowed in the back where he worked.
One time my car was in for service and an urgent service call came in. He insisted that I use his car to take care of it and eventually I gave in. It was a station wagon, and the entire back seat and cargo area was filled with old fast food wrappers and containers. The stench was incredible. Had to clean it out and drive with the windows open to keep from gagging.