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Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology

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  Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Mentifex <mentifex@myuw.net> - 2012-02-17 11:32 -0800
    Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-02-17 18:31 -0500
      Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-02-18 04:52 -0500
        Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-02-18 08:57 -1000
      Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2012-02-18 12:21 -0800
        Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-02-19 10:30 -0500
          Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-02-19 15:50 -0800
    Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Brad <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2012-02-17 16:30 -0800
    Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-02-18 05:28 -0500
      Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Mentifex <mentifex@myuw.net> - 2012-02-18 11:15 -0800
        Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> - 2012-02-18 15:44 -0500
          Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-02-19 09:16 +0000
            Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "A. K." <minforth@arcor.de> - 2012-02-19 12:53 +0100
              Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-02-19 12:47 +0000
                Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-02-19 09:12 -0500
                  Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-02-20 21:43 +0000
                    Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-02-20 18:12 -0500
                      Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-02-21 23:19 +0000
            Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> - 2012-02-19 08:27 -0500
            Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "P.M.Lawrence" <pml540114@gmail.com> - 2012-02-19 06:15 -0800
            Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Don McKenzie <5V@2.5A> - 2012-02-26 05:56 +1100
              Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-02-25 23:39 +0000
                Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-03-08 19:03 -0800
                  Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-03-09 20:13 +0000
            Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology m II <C@in.the.hat> - 2012-03-29 20:45 -0600
          Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Don McKenzie <5V@2.5A> - 2012-02-26 09:43 +1100
    Re: Don't Fall in Love With Your Technology Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-02-21 17:12 -0800

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#9709

On 19-Feb-12 8:16 PM, Paul E. Bennett wrote:
> Walter Bushell wrote:

>> In my day Sonny we entered programs through the front panel in absolute
>> octal machine code, no sissy assemblers for us and we liked it.
>>
>> See also, and a later more effete time "Mel the real programmer".
>>
>> Toggle switches and wiring boards. You haven't programmed until you've
>> entered patches at least through the front panel.
>
> You had switches??!!!! My first programming task required a soldering iron
> to put the diodes onto the matrix boards. ;>

I did all of the above, but I also worked on this system:
http://www.dontronics.com/first_multi_user_real_time.html

and here is a little of the other systems I worked on:
http://www.dontronics.com/my_early_tote_years.html

Some of the gear I maintained, was built during the 1930s.

Cheers Don...

================

-- 
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

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#9711

Don McKenzie wrote:

> On 19-Feb-12 8:16 PM, Paul E. Bennett wrote:
>> Walter Bushell wrote:
> 
>>> In my day Sonny we entered programs through the front panel in absolute
>>> octal machine code, no sissy assemblers for us and we liked it.
>>>
>>> See also, and a later more effete time "Mel the real programmer".
>>>
>>> Toggle switches and wiring boards. You haven't programmed until you've
>>> entered patches at least through the front panel.
>>
>> You had switches??!!!! My first programming task required a soldering
>> iron to put the diodes onto the matrix boards. ;>
> 
> I did all of the above, but I also worked on this system:
> http://www.dontronics.com/first_multi_user_real_time.html
> 
> and here is a little of the other systems I worked on:
> http://www.dontronics.com/my_early_tote_years.html
 
The second item reminded me a bit of the Telford Hoist Controller (built 
1910) and still operating in 1976. By then it had been refurbished twice. 
That, the Mercury Arc Rectifier system -110V DC supplies) and the GA16 
computer systems (oldest to most modern at the time), it made for quite a 
varied day.

> Some of the gear I maintained, was built during the 1930s.
> 
> Cheers Don...
> 
> ================
> 

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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#9953

> The second item reminded me a bit of the Telford Hoist Controller (built
> 1910) and still operating in 1976. By then it had been refurbished twice.
> That, the Mercury Arc Rectifier system -110V DC supplies) and the GA16
> computer systems (oldest to most modern at the time), it made for quite a
> varied day.

Mercury Arc Rectifier - Manx Electric Railway - Laxey I.O.M.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjMZ5qtyCUc

so pretty to look at I almost fell in love with it.

Jason

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#9965

Jason Damisch wrote:

> 
>> The second item reminded me a bit of the Telford Hoist Controller (built
>> 1910) and still operating in 1976. By then it had been refurbished twice.
>> That, the Mercury Arc Rectifier system -110V DC supplies) and the GA16
>> computer systems (oldest to most modern at the time), it made for quite a
>> varied day.
> 
> Mercury Arc Rectifier - Manx Electric Railway - Laxey I.O.M.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjMZ5qtyCUc
> 
> so pretty to look at I almost fell in love with it.
> 
> Jason

Actually prettier in real life. Don't know where you are but if it is 
anywhere near Amberley in West Sussex (UK) then go to the Amberly Museum's 
Electricity Exhibit <http://www.amberleymuseum.co.uk/>.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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#10642

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Hash: SHA1

Paul E. Bennett wrote:
> Walter Bushell wrote:
> 
>> In article 
>> <59e870a4-a045-4a92-a641-38bea4b3acc3@pw4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> 
Mentifex <mentifex@myuw.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> "IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE COMMAND LINE"
>> 
>> In my day Sonny we entered programs through the front panel in
>> absolute octal machine code, no sissy assemblers for us and we
>> liked it.
>> 
>> See also, and a later more effete time "Mel the real
>> programmer".
>> 
>> Toggle switches and wiring boards. You haven't programmed until
>> you've entered patches at least through the front panel.
> 
> You had switches??!!!! My first programming task required a
> soldering iron to put the diodes onto the matrix boards. ;>
> 
> When I graduated to switches (my first 6800 project) my codes were
> in hand crafted hex (about 4k of the stuff). Then we got to the
> ASR33 teletype and paper tape (when we got clever and wrote the
> names of progs on the leader). Also liked the way we could
> programme the magnetic core memory and carry it across the factory
> to plug it into the system that required it.
> 

When *I* was apprenticing, I had to carry the Jaquard Loom cards
across the mill floor to the Master. I'll never forget the day I
dropped them and mistakenly thought the order of the cards didn't matter.

On the bright side, I may have inadvertently invented psychedelic
tapestries. My next job was less eventful and involved stables.


mike


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#9710

On 26-Feb-12 7:08 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

>> I did all of the above, but I also worked on this system:
>> http://www.dontronics.com/first_multi_user_real_time.html
>
> My first computer was made from paperclips.
>
> <http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/paperClipComputer/HowToBuildAWorkingDigitalComputer_Jun67.pdf>
>
> scott

Touche! :-)

Cheers Don...

===============


-- 
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#9656

On Feb 17, 12:32 pm, Mentifex <menti...@myuw.net> wrote:
> In fair use I quote from his blogpost:
>
> > In the 1990s I followed the Usenet group comp.lang.forth.
> > Forth has great personal appeal. It's minimalist to the point
> > of being subversive, and Forth literature once crackled with
> > rightness.
>
> Somehow they got to him. Somehow they "turned" him.
>
> > A decade later, I stuck my head back in and started
> > reading. It was the same. The same tinkering with the
> > language, the same debates, and the same peculiar
> > lack of interest in using Forth to build incredible things.

There was no "they" that "turned" him --- the Forth community shot
itself in the foot a long time ago. We have met the enemy, and it was
us.

The problem is that there just aren't any libraries available. There
is no support for writing applications in Forth. We have all of those
Forth Inc. books, but they are useless. They don't even describe how
to implement structs, much less basic data structures such as arrays,
lists, etc.. Most Forthers think that this stuff has to be implemented
manually for every application, and then reimplemented again for the
next application, and so forth. That is why I wrote my novice package
(http://www.forth.org/novice.html) --- to support writing application
programs.

That slide-rule program that I wrote wasn't particularly complicated.
It could have been done easily in any language. In Forth however,
*everything* that I needed was missing. That is pathetic! This was in
2008, which 30 years after Forth was invented, and I had to start from
zero to write even a simple application --- I got the impression that
I was the first person to have ever written a non-trivial application
in Forth. About 80% of my time was spent in implementing basic support
code that any other language would have had available already, and
only 20% of my time writing the actual application itself. Every time
that began making progress on the application, I would get side-
tracked implementing some basic support code --- it is very difficult
to program that way, because I lose my train of thought regarding the
application program with these several-day distractions. Writing all
of that support code is how the novice package came into existence
though. I also added a lot of other stuff to the novice package, such
as arrays and associative-arrays, that seemed useful. I made it
publicly available, but all of the comp.lang.forth trolls just
attacked me for it.

Almost everybody who gets interested in Forth just tinkers with
extending the compiler, or they even write their own compiler (I'm
being charitable when I describe indirect-threaded-code as
"compilation"). Nobody ever writes any applications. Nobody ever
writes any code that would be useful for writing applications. Forth
is treated like a science-fair project --- it is not being used to
write applications.

The only person on comp.lang.forth who I think would be capable of
writing something comparable to the novice package, is Anton Ertl ---
but he spends all of his time dinking around with Gforth --- the only
problem is that Gforth is slow as molasses because it is an
interpreter written in C, and it is not useful for writing application
programs because of its abysmal performance. Gforth is a science-fair
project --- it will never be used to write an application program that
is used by anybody other than Forth enthusiasts.

On Feb 17, 4:31 pm, Doug Hoffman <glide...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/17/12 2:32 PM, Mentifex wrote:
> >> In the 1990s I followed the Usenet group comp.lang.forth.
>
> >> A decade later, I stuck my head back in and started
> >> reading. It was the same. The same tinkering with the
> >> language, the same debates,...
>
> He's mistaken.  The topics have changed.  I follow it mostly because I
> learn things.  How to do ANS multi-whiles and how to avoid wordlist
> search-order problems with create-does> are just two somewhat recent
> examples.
>
> -Doug

Oh, come on! I had multi-whiles working when I was still a teenager in
the late 1980s living with my mom. That was on SuperForth for the
C-64, or maybe I was still using HES Forth for the Vic-20 --- I don't
remember --- that is ancient history. I may have gotten the idea from
a Forth Dimensions magazine article, or maybe I just thought it up
myself. Who cares?

Your comment just proves the point that you said he was mistaken
about.

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