00:39:03 <Taaus> So... Which fugues can you play now?
00:41:07 <lament> c-minor, sometimes stumble just in a few places
00:41:19 <lament> and the first half of c-major :)
00:41:43 <lament> still a long way to go to playing the c# fugues which is what i really want to do.
00:42:04 <lament> (all of this from WTC book I)
00:42:06 <Taaus> Hehe... The first half of C-major is the easy part! :)
00:42:26 <lament> the second half is the hard part :)
00:42:44 <lament> it just doesn't make any sense.
00:42:54 <lament> i don't _hear_ those strettos, how am i supposed to play them!
00:43:03 <lament> i know exactly where they are and can't hear them anyway.
00:45:38 <lament> well, maybe i should just try harder.
00:45:58 <Taaus> Hearing or playing? :)
00:47:16 <lament> i don't really like it, anyway.
00:47:32 <lament> (because of those strettos)
00:47:50 <lament> it sounds like a dirty hack :)
00:48:31 <Taaus> J.S.Bach - The fugue-hacker.
00:48:32 <lament> at least the parts i can't play :))
00:49:47 <Taaus> Damnit... I can't seem to find my WTC book I.
00:49:55 <lament> i'm learning Fmaj now.
00:50:51 <lament> do you play the C# ones?
00:51:01 <Taaus> If you get the chance, try learning his F minor sinfonia... It's bizarre.
00:51:24 <Taaus> Nope... These days, I only play... Hmm... D-major, I think.
00:51:54 <lament> for a 4-voice fugue, that one's pretty lame.
00:52:06 <Taaus> Actually, these days I don't play a lot of Bach... I'm in a Scott Joplin period :)
00:52:17 <Taaus> Well... I like the ending of it :)
00:52:26 <lament> oh. I like the beginning :)
00:52:42 <lament> i would try to learn Entertainer if i had the score
00:52:50 <lament> but i only have a weird four-hands version
00:53:03 <Taaus> That would make it difficult.
00:53:17 <Taaus> Although you could learn both parts ;)
00:53:39 <lament> play one, return back in time to where i'm playing it and play the other one?
00:54:19 <Taaus> Yes! Time machines solve _everything_!
00:54:40 <lament> we've already established that time machines are impossible because they allow one to solve the halting problem
00:58:25 <lament> oh, i don't think i can play entertainer on my keyboard anyway
00:58:44 <lament> all WTC fits in four octaves :)
00:59:07 <Taaus> Four octaves... I'd go crazy.
00:59:12 <Taaus> Well... More crazy.
00:59:48 <lament> i just don't use the highest one :)
01:00:26 <Taaus> I have... Seven. And I recently got my piano tuned! Whooo.
01:02:02 <Taaus> Nah, not well-tempered. I prefer modern tuning.
01:02:26 <lament> "prefer"? You actually tried well temperament?
01:04:22 <lament> there's a theory that everything in WTC is written specifically to show off the idiosyncrasies of the key it's in.
01:04:29 <lament> which i don't believe, but it's still a good theory.
01:05:11 <Taaus> Yeah... I have a mathematician/musician acquaintance who wrote a bachelor thingy on that subject.
01:05:24 <Taaus> And I don't believe it either :P
01:05:51 <lament> considering that the C#major fugue, for example, was originally written in Cmajor
01:05:58 <lament> it's rather hard to believe :)
01:06:17 <lament> also it makes me want to play it in cmajor...
01:06:45 <Taaus> Well... Maybe Bach lucked out when it turned out that it sounded better in C# major ;)
01:07:03 <lament> no, it's only in C# to annoy me.
01:07:50 <lament> at least it's not in Java :)
01:08:05 <Taaus> Come now... C# major is an _easy_ key... You just have to remember that every single note is shifted up half a note ;)
01:08:21 <Taaus> Ew. Java... I have to use Java next semester... Pity me.
01:08:37 <lament> i used java this semester.
01:08:43 <lament> but it was only an introductory course.
01:08:56 <Taaus> I pity you! Introductorially.
01:08:58 <lament> guess what stuff they teach in introductory courses (CS 111)!
01:09:14 <lament> why, of course they teach all that stuff that's basic to computer science
01:10:42 <Taaus> Luckily, our first semester was SML... At least that's a halfway sane language.
01:10:59 <lament> they used Scheme for that introductory course.
01:11:25 <lament> Scheme is clearly a bad introductory language
01:11:30 <lament> you can't even create applets in it!
01:13:51 <lament> AND it doesn't have OO
01:14:05 <lament> I've tried arguing with prof over OO terminology.
01:14:08 <lament> of course, it's useless.
01:14:33 <Taaus> What's the disagreement?
01:14:34 <lament> bah! at least it's java, not C++
01:14:43 <lament> encapsulation vs. data hiding, for one
01:16:55 <Taaus> I wish we were using Smalltalk instead of Java.
01:17:31 <lament> i wish everybody were :)
01:18:13 <lament> smalltalk is too dynamic
01:18:43 <lament> of course, to do anythnig useful in Java
01:18:49 <lament> you have to cast things from Object
01:18:56 <lament> which makes it about as dynamic as smalltalk
01:19:03 <lament> but rather more inconvenient
01:19:25 <Taaus> Come now... Casting makes you feel ALIVE!
01:19:27 <lament> (and not at all type-safe)
01:20:47 <lament> yes, but casting also makes me regret it :)
06:40:55 <fizzie> our 'introductory course' is scheme, and up to last year it was taught using sicp as the course material and was a moderately challenging course, called (translated) something like 'programming T1', then in the next semester there's 'programming T2' which uses C and java and is utterly trivial.
06:42:34 <fizzie> (this year 't1' was changed to 'introduction to programming', half of the material was cut away and the book changed to htdp (<something> <something> design programs), because they thought it was _too_ challenging. I'd disagree but no-one asks me.)
06:43:31 <lament> fizzie: MIT did the same
06:45:47 <fizzie> oh? well, our 't1' didn't even try to cover whole sicp, only about the three first parts. don't think that would've been too much. and htdp is _horrible_. they use non-standard scheme, too. it's filled with "local"s, which is an utterly useless form since there already are internal defines and all the let-forms.
06:46:47 <fizzie> and they talk about lambda only in the last few chapters of the book, and it's introduced as being a shorthand notation for (local ((define (foo ..) ..)) foo).
06:48:14 <fizzie> uh anyway there's this 'digital and computer technology, basic course' exam in 14 minutes, guess I should get going to the right building.
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11:00:17 <fizzie> that was rather trivial.
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