Re: "A diagram of C23 basic types"

On 4/15/2025 5:56 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:40:48 -0500, BGB wrote:
 

Practically, picoseconds are likely the smallest unit of time that
people could practically measure or hope to make much use of.

 “10¯¹² seconds ought to be enough for anybody.”
 The lessons of software backward-compatibility baggage teach us that we
need to think a bit beyond present-day technological limitations.
 

In all likelihood, computers will not get much faster (in terms of clock speeds) than they are already.
If things were able to get much faster (without melting) then more fundamental rethinking would be needed about how things work, as clock pulses could no longer be used for global synchronization, and (going further) an inability to pass signals through metal wires.

Planck units are so small as to be essentially useless for any
practical measurement.

 And as far as we know, that will always be true.

Such is the problem.
But, for what things you need to know "hey, what time is it?" you don't need more accuracy than can be made use of.
Like, for similar reasons, if a person times how long it takes to walk their dog; minutes and seconds makes sense, milliseconds or microseconds do not.
You may care about milliseconds in a horse race (say, to see who crossed the line first), but you don't need microseconds or nanoseconds for this.
Games and multimedia care about low milliseconds or high microseconds (*1), and tasks involving driving signals over IO pins are often in microsecond territory.
*1: A standard 60Hz frame is 16ms.
   But, can note: I don't see 60Hz...
Though, I have noted that I have some visual anomalies which have a timing component:
   I am relatively insensitive to fast movement;
     Much faster than 16 fps looks like fluid motion;
     If an object moves quickly, I can't see it, at all.
       It will just disappear and reappear somewhere else.
   I have light sensitivity issues, and don't do well at bright lighting.
     Though, "shade 4" sunglasses or welding goggles can help here.
       They make it much easier to see in "daylight" conditions (*2).
     My preferred lighting level is arguably "dim".
     My ability to see in direct sunlight is hindered.
       Or, to even see objects lit by direct sunlight.
   Seemingly non-standard color perception.
     The world I see IRL just looks different from that on computers.
     Not that drastic, just like, colors are different.
   ...
*2: Well, seemingly something between "shade 4" and "shade 5" would be nice. Shade 4 was the darkest I could find for normal sunglasses, but sunglasses are much less uncomfortable than welding goggles. And also less prone to turn the world into near monochromatic green; color vision is basically wrecked by welding goggles. Also welding goggles are a little too dark for indoor use.
I don't really need anything in my room, but my room is currently lit with a single "50W equivalent" bulb. No diffuser though, so need to use care (my vision gets wrecked if I look too closely in the direction of the bulb). I do have a desk-lamp though (40W equivalent CFL), as sometimes this sort of intense focused light is needed for soldering.
But, thinking, went and ordered some more cool-white CFLs (I generally prefer the light produced by CFL's over LED; IME colors tend to look weirder and more distorted under LED lighting than if using CFL; incandescent was preferable still, but they aren't really as much of a thing anymore).
Decided to leave out going into CFL vs LED bulbs (and my general preference for CFL and seeming non-standard color perception weirdness, ...).
Best I can tell though, a lot comes back to "rod cells", and seemingly my ability to see stuff effectively is highly dependent on the operating parameters of rod cells.
...