[fpc-devel] Re: FPC related fairy tale

[John Lee]

I go back rather (too?) far...eg pre v1.0 - unfortunately I can't remember
what the version was when I first downloaded fpk &  tried to compile an fft
- it crashed compiler - fixed by Jonas iirc. I'm so sad that I still use
fpk for fpc directories - I'm kind'a sorry we changed that.  I sort of got
the flow about 'right'? except I thought the king might be have been &
perhaps should have been Florian!

NIce story, btw brilliant English too -  tho' I'm used to calling the 3
Kings 'Magis' in context of Christmas and all that...J

On 5 November 2012 20:28, Sven Barth <pascaldragon at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 18.10.2012 13:13, Sven Barth wrote:
>
>> Once upon a time there was a small kingdom ruled by a kind king. The
>> king had two daughters and more children were planned to come. But the
>> king had already problems to find approbiate rooms for his second child.
>> So he ordered his mages to reconstruct the castle in a way that the
>> ever-growing family can easily be accommodated.
>> The mages immediately began with their work and reshaped the castle with
>> their spells. But as the work on the castle neared its completion a
>> terrible accident happend to the second princess when she played between
>> the working mages. She was no longer able to walk or even sit upright
>> without support. The mages tried their best to heal her, but in the end
>> they needed to finish the castle so that the royal family could have
>> their home back before the winter strikes. But even after the castle had
>> been finished they didn't have enough time for the disabled princess as
>> the family had already grown during the mages' work and required their
>> full attention. And so the days and months passed by in which the second
>> daughter of the king was confined to her room and could not join in the
>> family's activities.
>> Then one day a young mage came along and joined the mages of the castle.
>> He helped them with maintaining the magically enhanced castle, but while
>> searching for places to fix and further extend he stumpled upon the room
>> of the isolated princess. He felt sorry for the girl's state and
>> although he did not know much about healing magic he decided to improve
>> his knowledge and help the her. So he spent the evenings after his
>> normal work at the castle in the library and looked through the books
>> about healing magic. Sometimes he then went to the princess' chamber and
>> applied his newly learned knowledge.
>> After some weeks his work finally paid off and the girl was able to feel
>> and move her legs again. And after some more time she was finally able
>> to walk again. Although she needed to move slowly and with the help of
>> crutches, she was finally able to take part in the life at the castle
>> again. The young mage continued to heal her and they all lived happily
>> ever after.
>>
>> So... now I'm curious what you think I have worked on and I'm also
>> curious whether someone can fully "decipher" that little story. :)
>>
>
> Before I forget it: here is the meaning of the story elements:
>
> small kingdom => FPC project + community (small compared to e.g. the C
> "kingdom" ;) )
> the royal family => the compiler with
>   the king => the "fpc" binary
>   the children => the single "ppcX" binaries (with "ppcX" and "ppcrossX"
> being together as one)
>     the oldest child => x86 (the platform on which Florian developed FPC
> on)
>     the second oldest child => m68k (the first platform after x86 that he
> compiler was ported to and which lead to the insight that the code
> generator needs to be redesigned)
>     all the other younger children => arm, powerpc(64), sparc, mips(el),
> x86_64, jvm (, aarch64 ;) ) - most of them were "born" during the rewrite
>     (not mentioned, but the children that are dead (at least so far) =>
> alpha, itanium, vis)
> the mages => the compiler developers
> the rebuilding of the castle => the code generator rewrite (and I like the
> result very much! :D )
> the "accident" => m68k never got fully rewritten
> the "young mage" => me :)
> the healing => fixing the m68k code generator
> the need to use crutches => m68k starts to compile simple applications
> again (the current state I'd describe as "heavily limping without crouches"
> by the way)
>
> I hope now it's more clear what I wanted to tell with the story. Some
> parts might indeed not be that obvious (e.g. that the king is the "fpc"
> binary; he could have been "King FPK" as well ;) ), but I had not imagined
> that it's that unobvious...
>
> Regards,
> Sven
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