[ExI] cool! locals create circuit board modeled on the human brain

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 12:02 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> BillW, the very first version of Excel macros by Microsloth (from 1993)
> allowed recursive algorithms and self-modifying code.  One could accidently
> write a virus; I did.
>
> Over the years, Microsloth has intentionally defeated the features that
> allowed self-modifying macro code, since plenty of people got themselves in
> trouble with that early version; it had no guardrails.  You could generate
> files automatically, which could fill your hard disk quickly for instance.
>
> I have the notion that to have software program itself requires removal of
> those guardrails.  We might use something like Excel version 5 to do
> something like that.  Have we any Excel 5 gurus left among us?  Has anyone
> here tried to run that on a modern platform?
>
> We have script-gurus here who can tell us what are the modern capabilities
> of self-modifying code.
>

That we do.  If you want to write self-modifying code, there are far, FAR
better platforms for that.  One might even ascribe to Microsoft a motive of
encouraging people who want to write such, to use said better tools instead
of wasting their time with Excel (and making Microsoft's employees wait
that much longer for the Singularity).
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