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Groups > comp.lang.forth > #17381 > unrolled thread
| Started by | Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| First post | 2012-11-19 16:03 +0000 |
| Last post | 2012-11-29 11:47 -0800 |
| Articles | 20 on this page of 180 — 34 participants |
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why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-19 16:03 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-19 16:06 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? daveyrotten <danw8804@gmail.com> - 2012-11-19 08:15 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2012-11-19 12:07 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-20 02:27 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Winston19842005 <winston19842005@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-19 21:59 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-19 19:21 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 01:33 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-20 05:09 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-20 18:48 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-11-20 09:49 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Pablo Hugo Reda <pabloreda@gmail.com> - 2012-11-19 10:59 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-19 19:06 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-19 14:25 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-19 20:29 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-20 05:42 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 17:23 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-20 21:05 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-21 14:24 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-20 18:24 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-20 03:07 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 17:35 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-20 21:02 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-21 02:04 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-20 19:21 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-21 01:34 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-21 04:51 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-21 04:43 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201211.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-11-21 20:34 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-21 12:04 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-22 21:19 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-23 02:05 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-23 03:05 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-23 03:22 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-23 12:13 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-23 12:24 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-23 10:43 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-23 15:10 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-23 13:40 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-23 13:44 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-24 01:29 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-24 04:54 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-24 16:56 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-25 04:16 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2012-11-26 14:48 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-23 09:12 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-23 22:00 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-23 03:52 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-23 07:34 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-23 09:57 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-23 20:09 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-24 04:53 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-24 14:32 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-24 21:01 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-25 02:22 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-25 02:27 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-11-23 19:12 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-23 22:39 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-11-24 16:54 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-11-25 05:09 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2012-11-25 13:33 +0200
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-24 12:20 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-24 20:45 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-25 02:21 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-21 14:38 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-21 18:17 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-23 04:26 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Ron Aaron <rambamist@gmail.com> - 2012-11-23 15:28 +0200
Re: why bother with standards ? awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) - 2012-11-21 17:29 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 17:21 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2012-11-21 13:00 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-21 14:31 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-21 17:41 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-21 20:33 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Humphries <mwh@intranetsys.com> - 2012-11-22 10:00 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-22 17:16 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 17:12 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2012-11-20 17:30 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 17:48 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Andy Valencia <vandys@vsta.org> - 2012-11-20 19:40 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 19:50 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-20 15:41 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-21 14:43 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-21 08:46 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2012-11-20 14:09 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-24 10:41 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-24 11:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-24 22:32 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-25 07:54 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-25 17:02 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-25 16:20 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-25 19:44 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2012-11-26 14:59 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-26 11:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-26 13:05 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-26 15:29 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-26 16:38 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-26 19:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-26 20:29 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-26 22:22 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-26 23:03 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-27 01:09 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-27 08:52 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-27 10:43 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-27 12:01 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-28 23:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-29 00:00 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-28 22:13 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 01:11 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Gerry Jackson <gerry@jackson9000.fsnet.co.uk> - 2012-11-29 11:00 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-29 18:58 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 12:51 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-30 00:42 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 19:57 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-30 02:22 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-30 18:47 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-11-30 12:53 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-30 18:33 +0100
Debuggers (Re: why bother with standards ?) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-11-29 13:44 +0000
Re: Debuggers (Re: why bother with standards ?) Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 09:36 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-29 06:01 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 10:00 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-29 12:22 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 10:38 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-11-29 21:13 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-29 17:11 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-30 03:37 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-30 02:11 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-11-30 05:24 -0600
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-30 11:23 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? the_gavino_himself <visphatesjava@gmail.com> - 2012-11-29 21:16 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-29 08:38 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-11-29 18:43 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-11-29 12:15 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 09:23 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-11-29 18:24 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 11:06 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-29 17:35 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 22:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-29 21:08 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-30 17:41 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-11-30 08:43 -1000
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-30 02:30 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-11-30 10:40 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2012-11-30 14:03 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-30 14:06 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-11-30 14:51 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Howerd <howerdo@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-11-30 14:58 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-02 18:02 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-12-03 16:34 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-12-03 21:39 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-03 14:49 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2012-12-05 09:24 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-05 11:26 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-05 11:39 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2012-12-05 15:32 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-12-05 20:57 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-12-05 18:55 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-12-05 20:01 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> - 2012-12-06 19:05 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-12-06 16:14 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Bill Marcum <bill@nowhere.invalid> - 2012-12-07 20:13 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2012-12-03 14:29 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2012-11-30 02:20 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-11-30 06:52 -0500
Re: why bother with standards ? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-11-29 19:12 +0100
Re: why bother with standards ? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-11-29 14:55 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-11-26 22:01 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-27 01:44 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Ed" <invalid@nospam.com> - 2012-11-21 12:40 +1100
Re: why bother with standards ? Chris Hinsley <chris.hinsley@gmail.com> - 2012-11-21 14:51 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-21 19:24 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-11-21 21:54 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? The Beez <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2012-11-24 08:03 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? "Ed" <invalid@nospam.com> - 2012-11-30 14:45 +1100
Re: why bother with standards ? stephenXXX@mpeforth.com (Stephen Pelc) - 2012-11-30 10:48 +0000
Re: why bother with standards ? "Ed" <invalid@nospam.com> - 2012-12-04 03:52 +1100
Re: why bother with standards ? The Beez <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2012-12-06 10:34 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? The Beez <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2012-12-06 10:37 -0800
Re: why bother with standards ? the_gavino_himself <visphatesjava@gmail.com> - 2012-11-29 11:47 -0800
Page 3 of 9 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next page →
| From | Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 01:29 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <5016131.OJKVAK3XXC@sunwukong.fritz.box> |
| In reply to | #17511 |
Paul Rubin wrote: > "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> writes: >>> Moore' work was almost a decade after Dijkstra's note. >> But AFAIK not influenced by it. Chuck had no interest in academic >> computer science, and did not follow the literature. > > I think Chuck has mentioned Forth being influenced by Lisp, and that > he > studied Lisp with McCarthy in the early 1960's. Lisp was a different > branch of programming evolution than the Algol branch that Dijkstra > was involved in though, I guess. McCarthy is explicitely mentioned in Dijkstra's paper as one of the persons he discussed that idea at length. So there is only a one-hop way between Dijkstra and Chuck, and it's the correct time-frame. As Chuck was influenced Burroughs B5000 (finished in 1961, actually *ahead* of Dijkstra's publication date), it could well be that the actual root of both ideas is the B5000. Ideas do spread even when you don't actually read the papers yourself. It's completely sufficient when your teacher does so. And in Chuck's case, we know that the teacher did discuss this paper at length with its author. We have other denials of influence in the greater Forth history, too. Adobe denied for quite a long time that Postscript was inspired by Forth. However, just about half a year before they started the Postscript project, a Forth programmer did a demo at Adobe, demonstrating his graphics language, written in Forth. As Picasso said, good artists copy, great artists steal, great artists usually take mental ownership of ideas of others. They quickly forget who inspired them, as their ego otherwise wouldn't allow them to follow that path. People like Chuck like to reinvent everything themselves. They actually don't, but they deny influence. -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://bernd-paysan.de/
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| From | Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 04:54 -0600 |
| Message-ID | <tsmdnQCrXKTBOi3NnZ2dnUVZ8sSdnZ2d@supernews.com> |
| In reply to | #17513 |
Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> wrote: > > We have other denials of influence in the greater Forth history, too. > Adobe denied for quite a long time that Postscript was inspired by > Forth. However, just about half a year before they started the > Postscript project, a Forth programmer did a demo at Adobe, > demonstrating his graphics language, written in Forth. Not exactly. The Geocities page has expired, so here's the article, in full. Andrew. PLATO is resurrected! The Genesis of Postscript (1981) By Jim Bowery Version 20010406 Copyright 2001 The author grants the right to copy, without modification. The Challenge From 2001 through 2007 I offered, with no takers, $500 to the first person who could document the existence of a Xerox PARC communication concerning post-fix notation for page description languages prior to my visit to that facility in November 1981 in my capacity as Manager of Interactive Architectures for Viewdata Corporation of America, the videotex joint venture between AT&T and Knight-Ridder News. Communiques regarding "JaM" were disqualified unless they specifically use the term "page description language", "typesetting language" or some equivalent phrase, and are appropriately dated. The History What was the true genesis of the Postscript? Here's a perspective out of left field: It started with the first scientific pocket calculator ever produced -- the Hewlett-Packard 35 -- and its reverse polish "postfix" notation. I saw an HP-35 advertised in Scientific American during my senior year in high school, in 1972, and thought: "I want one." That's why I worked all summer with "Shorty" the ex-convict, driving garbage trucks with 18 gears I was never properly trained to use and drinking beers so as to Lorenz-contract the days that were punctuated with hot steaming maggots down my neck as bemused debs reclined in their back yards nurturing their future basal cell carcinomas. When I started at the University of Iowa, I forked over my saved up $495 to Hewlett-Packard and instead of a slide-rule on my belt, I had this neat little black pouch that could do it all while flashing tiny red light-emitting-diode numbers -- reverse polish operation. I found only one other person on campus who had one -- a chemistry professor. Well, OK, I lied. What really happened was that while I was working as a garbage man to earn enough money for my HP-35, many mornings at 6AM they would tell me they didn't need me that day, which is when I would head over to Drake University and wait for my brother to get out of class at noon. That was almost 6 hours away, and I needed some way to pass the time. After poking around a bit on campus, I found this little old 2 story house that had a "Mathematics Department" sign. Inside, off to the left, was a long room. In that room was a desk-top Hewlett-Packard calculator with a flat-bed pen plotter hooked to it. It had more buttons than you could shake a stick at and this little magnetic card you could insert to record the buttons you were pressing, which included comparison and conditional branch buttons. You could program it to not only do calculations, but to move the pen around on the plotter bed that held the paper down with static. It was really cool. I could finally use a lot of that worthless junk about polynomials and stuff I had learned in high school and draw lots of neat op-art patterns with a pseudo-3D look to them. That desk calculator (I don't recall the model number), of course, also used reverse polish notation -- postfix -- to drive its plotter. By the time I got my HP-35 that fall, postfix operations were second nature to me. When the HP-35 fell in price by a factor of two later that year, it taught me my first lesson of consumerism in the early stages of Moore's Shockwave, but I never felt jealous of the guys who bought the cheaper Texas Instruments calculators with all that parenthetic noise. Who could think like that? Postfix was obviously the right way to do things. Ignoring some history we cut to the chase: In August 1980, Byte magazine published its issue on the Forth programming language. At that time, I was working with Control Data Corporation's PLATO project, pursuing a mass market version of that system using the Intelligent Student Terminal (IST). The IST's were Z80 processor terminals sporting 512*512 bit mapped displays with touch sensitive screens and 1200bps modems that went for about $1500. We were shooting for, and actually successfully tested, a system that could support almost 8,000 simultaneous users on 7600-derived Cybers (the last machine designed by Seymour Cray to be marketed by CDC --with 60 bits per word, 6 bits per character, no virtual memory, but very big and very fast) with under 1/4 second response time (all keys and touch inputs went straight to the central processor) for $40/month flat rate including terminal rental. Ray Ozzie had been working at the University of Illinois on offloading the PLATO central system to the Z80 terminal through downloaded assembly language programming, doing exotic things like "local key echo" and such functions. I was interested in extending Ray's work to offload the mass-market version of the PLATO central system. In particular I was looking at a UCSD Pascal-based approach to download p-code versions of terminal functions -- and even more in particular the advanced scalable vector graphics commands of TUTOR (the "relative/rotatable" commands like rdraw, rat, rcircle, rcircleb, etc.) if not entire programs, to be executed offline. Pascal was an attractive choice for us at the time because CDC's new series of computers, the Cyber 180 (aka Cyber 800) was to have virtual memory, 64 bit words, 8 bit characters and be programmed in a version of the University of Minnesota Pascal called CYBIL (which stood for Cyber Implementation Language). Although this was a radically different architecture than that upon which PLATO was then running, I thought it worthwhile to investigate an architecture in which a reasonable language (you should have seen what we were used to!) could be made to operate on both the server and the terminal so that load could be dynamically redistributed. This idea of dynamic load balancing would, later, contribute to the genesis of Postscript. Over one weekend a group of us junior programmers managed to implement a good portion of TUTOR's (PLATO's authoring language) advanced graphics commands in CYBIL. Our little hunting pack at CDC 's Arden Hills Operations was in a race against the impending visit of Dave Anderson of the University of Illinois' PLATO project who was promoting what he called "MicroTUTOR". Anderson was going to take the TUTOR programming language and implement a modified version of it for execution in the terminal -- possibly in a stand-alone mode. Many of us didn't like TUTOR, itself, much. Indeed, I had to pull teeth to get the authorization to put local variables into TUTOR -- and we were determined to select a better board from our quiver with which to surf Moore's Shockwave into the Network Revolution. CDC management wasn't convinced that such a radical departure from TUTOR would be wise, and we hoped to demonstrate that a p-code Pascal approach could accomplish what microTUTOR purported to -- and more. We quickly ported a TUTOR central system program to CYBIL -- a vocabulary lesson called "The Great Elendo" (teaching how endings are added on to words) -- because it had been written in a particularly "structured" manner (by Tom Czwornog for Gary Michael's crew in Champaign-Urbana on the PLATO system there), and therefore fit well the "structured programming" paradigm pushed by Pascal adherents of the day. A dramatic aside: We had a bit of a scare when David Woolley the author of PLATO Notes (which would become the inspiration for Ray Ozzie's Lotus Notes), came in on Monday and was so impressed with what we'd accomplished over the weekened that he swam through all the code we'd written. Unfortunately, there was some confusion and, quite uncharacteristically for Dave, he deleted the wrong file -- the one with our code in it which hadn't yet been backed up by the system operators. Thankfully, rather than committing hara-kiri, Dave just quietly expressed his deep remorse, turned around and during the next 24 hours rewrote the entire program which he had inspected so carefully; all in time to save the demo. Dave is one of the most meticulous people with whom I've worked. This is born out by the fact that virtually anyone who has worked in computers for any length of time has made an error like this, but few of us have been able to recover our honor so quickly, gracefully and decisively. Our little hunting pack bagged the demo, and we continued to be interested in Pascal both on the central server and on the terminal, as a means of dynamically distributing load, but the Cyber 180's hardware architecture was inadequate and the conversion problems to reimplement PLATO too great for this approach to be practical. It looked as though we would be stuck with Cray's older architecture that had demonstrated such economic performance in my tests of a version of the PLATO system targeting the mass market (tests run at CDC's Benchmark Laboratory next to CDC headquarters, right across from the airport in Bloomington). A tragic aside: CDC mangement refused even to run a market test of the mass market version of PLATO, despite the fact that the financials looked promising, the system was up and running at CDC's Benchmark Laboratory with fully capable telephone and cable head end interfaces and there were indications that the demand for email, alone, within a metropolitan area would have ensured PLATO's success in the mass market. I don't hold CDC's Bill Norris accountable for this except to the extent that he probably should have just fired all his middle management down to the grunts and spun CDC off into a bunch of small companies, each with its own "Seymour" -- something that would have placed Norris in jeopardy from the forces already arrayed against him in Wall Street. If he had taken that draconian action on behalf of CDC's stockholders, he would almost certainly have produced an explosion of innovation fueled by the high-achieving Midwestern baby boomer population as they entered their careers. Opposition to Norris infected CDC itself, often incited by institutional investors who did not agree with Norris' vision and were able to set fashions for the fashion-conscious via their influence on the business press. If not for them subverting CDC's culture of innovation with a culture of popular fashion, combined with Norris' failure to ruthlessly rid CDC of insubordinates, Norris could have delivered on his vision. I know -- I was there and saw to it that PLATO was benchmarked out and ready to ship to the masses at $40/month including IST rental, at the same time HBO was making its first inroads, at least a year before IBM cut its deal with Bill Gates and 4 years before Steve Jobs paid a buxom valkyrie lookalike do a hammer-toss-and-jiggle on his behalf before the stunned eyes of football fans everywhere. I did push on this aspect of the PLATO project hard enough within the programming teams that I became the person most associated with mass-marketing of PLATO in the eyes of my peers and immediate supervisors, and was therefore the person recommended for a key position with Viewdata Corporation of America when that company advertised for a PLATO expert -- after, of course, CDC management had rejected my proposed market test of PLATO. It wasn't enough to be a 26 year old programmer pulling down a Carter-inflation-wage-and-price-controlled $20,000/year. I was in a poor position to by-pass 7 levels of middle management to gain Norris' ear and Norris' bet-the-company strategy on filling unmet social needs never meshed with the profound tactical strengths available in the well-funded PLATO system that he was so intent on supporting. The "Personal Computer" might never have risen to the prominence it did. Rather we could have begun the evolution of the "Network Computer" in 1980. It is no exaggeration to say that as a result of CDC's failure to deploy PLATO to the mass market, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, midwest computing lost its leadership (which began with the first computer) to the West and the network revolution was delayed at least 15 years. The further ramifications of this critical juncture in history, given the demographic power of the recently-urbanized baby boomer generation on entry to its marrying years in 1980, are radical and profound. I'm sure there are people from Xerox PARC who have similar retrospective concerns, but did Xerox have a man of Norris' publically articulated vision in the position of command contending with a virtual mutiny of his officers? It's interesting if not predictable that it was from the PLATO IST that some of the key thinking directly parallel to, if not critical to, Postscript would arise. The IST was the closest thing to the Apple Macintosh in price and capability prior to the release of the Mac (which was the first PC to use Postscript). It's also interesting that the Mac ended up with a version of Pascal as its primary system language. Something worthy of study by metahistorians, is that so little history has been recorded about the PLATO IST. At $1500 it was perhaps the most advanced technology of its kind at that time. People had been playing remote 3D graphical multiuser games, at resolutions similar to those supported by the Macintosh, on PLATO, for over 5 years by 1980 when the IST was being produced by the thousands at this low price for use with PLATO. Having looked at UCSD Pascal's threaded p-code, the Byte magazine issue on Forth made a good case for considering the Forth virtual machine, not only because of its own compactness, but also the compactness of the programs that it could execute. Although we weren't so tight on RAM with the IST that we were forced to consider Forth over p-code, the compact representation of executable programs in Forth was a big plus for transmission across the limited bandwidth modems of the era. It wasn't so compelling compared to p-code as to force an immediate reorientation -- particularly given the fact that Pascal was a higher level language than was Forth, as well as matching the central system implementation language CYBIL, and was therefore more appropriate as a primary authoring language. Nevertheless, Forth's postifix notation reminded me of the good old days with my first HP calculators and drawing those cool pictures on the flat bed plotter. I admit it -- I was hooked on the ideas in Forth and wanted get my hands on a working implementation. As a consequence of CDC's refusal to pursue a test of PLATO in the much larger markets made possible by a $40/month service, I accepted a position with Viewdata Corporation of America, a joint venture between AT&T and Knight-Ridder News, as its Manager of Interactive Architectures -- primarily because AT&T and Knight-Ridder were familiar with mass markets and were targeting them from the outset. My responsibilities included design of an "authoring system" for the Viewtron videotex system which was being developed by Viewdata for deployment in those mass markets. Unfortunately, I was hampered in this by the prior choice of a Tandem T-16 as the central system upon which to run the service. The T-16 was abysmally weak as a central system compared to the Cyber 760's (modernized 7600's) upon which I had benchmarked the mass-market version of PLATO. Nevertheless, I accepted the position with the impression that it might be possible to select a different central system vendor. Certainly it makes little sense to choose a central system vendor before acquiring a manager responsible for "architectures". I started at Viewdata the same month that Byte magazine put out it's famous August 1981 Smalltalk issue. It was immediately apparent that the Smalltalk language and programming environment was superior to anything associated with Pascal. Further, Smalltalk had a similar target audience to PLATO -- Alan Kay had even wanted children to be able to program in it. As the person most responsible for devising an authoring system, I was immediately hooked. I had seen the film of Stanford Research Institute's mouse interface while working on the PLATO Communications Project in 1974 (developing a computer-based Delphi conferencing system) and the Smalltalk system was quite reminiscent of some of what I had seen. This was for good reason, of course, since Smalltalk's user interface design had benefitted from SRI's pioneering work. However, in addition to being saddled with the T-16 as the central system, the Viewtron terminals being designed by Western Electric, although quite capable in other ways, had very limited RAM. What ROM was available in them was being committed to interpret the North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax (NAPLPS) -- which is a fancy way of saying they displayed a vector graphics extension to the ASCII character set. NAPLPS had a marginal "macro" and font definition capability, but was otherwise very limited in its programmability. Since the Viewtron system was planned to roll-out to all the metropolitan areas in which Knight-Ridder had newspapers, as well as in cities where partner companies had a presence, the architectural challenge of the authoring system involved allowing for geographically distributed programming as well as offloading of the central processors to the terminal processors. PLATO had just started down the path of a distributed file system and networked notes (ala Usenet), so the issues, while not entirely alien, were somewhat new to me. Some of the better work at the time was with Intel's research into the iMAX operating system and its distributed file system based on the ideas of MIT's David P. Reed and his 1978 doctoral thesis. Reed's work had been closely associated with the CLU programming language which was an early object oriented language with strong affinities to Smalltalk. Although the iMAX OS itself ran on Intel's wildly advanced iAPX432 processor (at PLATO, Dave Woolley and I christened it "the UFO"), and was therefore geared toward the Department of Defense's design-by-committee language, Ada, the version of "Ada" implemented on the 432 was actually more dynamic than that specified by the DoD. Indeed, the iMAX OS was designed to allow device drivers and system libraries to be dynamically added and altered without rebooting. The "Ada" running on the iMAX OS was so dynamic, it actually had a lot more in common with Smalltalk than the folks at Xerox PARC might have liked to believe. Although I didn't (and still don't) see object-oriented programming as the long-term solution to the distributed computing problem, and was in communication with one of the iMAX OS's contributors, Bruce MacLennan, regarding a radically different approach to programming based on the relational calculus, I did see the Smalltalk and the iMAX's dynamic "Ada" systems as being mature enough to ride on their strength for the next 5 to 10 years until the relational paradigm was ready for deployment. I hoped that the 432's hardware design could be sped up as Intel applied its best hardware experts to demultiplexing its microprogramming enough that its fault tolerance and distributed programming strengths could be applied to Viewdata's unique requirements -- if not during the initial roll-out, then in the next generation of the Viewtron network. The first rollout of the 432 would rely on iMAX with its dynamic "Ada" and then later deploy a distributed Smalltalk environment throughout the network, including demand-driven downloads of Smalltalk to the terminals themselves as they became genuine network computers. All of this led me to begin seriously considering the migration paths from the current "dumb" NAPLPS terminal with T-16 central systems to a programmable terminal which could eventually execute Smalltalk. As I admitted above, I was hooked on the very idea of Forth, and as it turned out, so was another key figure within Viewdata, Jim Thompson. Thompson, who would later develop Viewtron's postfix Game Oriented Language for Business and Leisure (GOLFBAL) for actual storage of execution on Viewtron, had a subscription to the Forth Interest Group newsletter and was happy to provide me with all the back issues. It made sense that with less than 8K of RAM in the Western Electric terminals (far less than the PLATO ISTs), and only a little more ROM, the best way to make them fully programmable was to burn the ultra-compact Forth virtual machine into the ROM and use what precious little RAM was available to store tightly threaded, dynamically downloaded Forth "words" for the execution of high level vector graphics primitives through low level interactive graphics programs, transmitted as a stream of compressed definitions and subsequent invocations over the limited-bandwidth phone connections. A postfix language for page description was thereby conceived -- not surprisingly -- as part of the first experiment in electronic transmission of newspapers in a highly compressed form. The migration path from such a low-capability terminal to a fully-distributed authoring system was still unclear, but one thing was clear about Forth's virtual machine: It could act as a virtual machine for any higher level language, especially a language like Smalltalk. Being a fan of, and having programmed, Seymour Cray's parsimonious instruction sets and elegantly simple hardware architectures, I appreciated the design intelligence that Chuck Moore brought to the Forth virtual machine. Viewed in this light, Forth was a macro assembly language for a future Forth microprocessor -- entirely capable of executing Smalltalk as one of its higher level languages. The trip to Xerox PARC was inevitable. I was among those from Viewdata who in November of 1981 visited Xerox PARC. A few things about that trip stand out, but one thing is for certain: When the subject of NAPLPS came up, I was shown source code written in a page description language in use by Xerox by a member of the Smalltalk team. It was definitely not, a postfix notation. I then spoke on our thoughts of using a tokenized Forth communication protocol to store and transmit programmable graphics for Viewtron's electronic newsprint. When I did so, I saw an immediate look of reflection pass over the face of our presenter. It was my definite impression that I was seeing the "Aha!" lights turn on at Xerox PARC right then. But our time was limited and the focus was on Smalltalk rather than page description languages, so we moved on with the demonstrations. I honestly don't recall the name of the person who was showing their PDL, nor who else was present during that conversation. It seemed a causual exchange between two programmers at the time -- exchanges in which such "Aha!" events are quite common. Next year, in 1982, Xerox engineers spec-ed out the "Interpress" page description language -- purportedly the first postfix page description language ever. Official accounts vary on whether Interpress was derived from Xerox's "JaM", from Xerox's "Press Format" PDL, or both. It is possible I was shown a "Press Format" source file as it was not a postfix notation. JaM, however, was derived from the "Design System" postfix language for representation of 3D objects developed at Evans and Sutherland and folks from the University of Utah. I can believe that Evans and Sutherland beat the PLATO culture to the punch on this one, as they had a habit of doing on a number of important 3D innovations. But the PLATO system had it's own coups over Evans and Sutherland, including the first ray traced 3D image of a solids model by Don Lee -- PLATO system programmer -- under a challenge from Ron Resch, who was from the same University of Iowa computer graphics facility within which I would later write the first 3D multiuser virtual reality game. Ron Resch went on to work with Evans and Sutherland and the University of Utah where he would teach the likes of Alan Kay and others who eventually ended up at Xerox PARC. Crucial questions remain: Why was it that in the most advanced aspect of Xerox PARC -- the Smalltalk project -- the PDL being demonstrated to representatives of a major electronic newspaper project was "Press Format" rather than "JaM"? Was the look of epiphany on the face of the PARC demonstrator upon being told of the device-independent PDL based on Forth, actually him recalling that PARC had its own postfix notation PDL in "JaM" and he simply didn't mention it for fear of a breach of some sort? We were under nondisclosure agreement at the time, and we were clearly interested in deploying such technology and we were capable of paying for it if not contributing to its standardization -- so why not just spit it out? Was the subsequent specification of Interpress merely a concidence, merely parallel development or was it perhaps energized by the realization that a major electronic newspaper project could be on the verge of introducing a JaM-like standard for page layout to the international standards committees? In the final analysis, except for a billion dollars here or there, and where the profits might have been invested, it hardly matters who actually invented the first postifix page description language. Given the densely entangled identities of the University of Iowa, University of Illinois and University of Utah from which the creation of "Interpress" emerged, not to mention PLATO, Smalltalk and advanced 3D rendering technologies, it is clear that the identity of the actual inventor of the postfix PDL, as well as these other technologies, was a pioneering culture. That culture was plowing new territory cleared out by Moore's Shockwave with the same energy that plowed the loam, a century earlier, around the locations of those same land grant colleges. The only real question remaining is whether the capital accumulation will be used to open up fertile fields for future generations to plow, or whether it will merely decay as did Xerox?
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| From | visualforth@rocketmail.com |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 16:56 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <bc4bba35-ba97-43ad-8ab5-7b3fec0cc359@googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17521 |
On Saturday, November 24, 2012 5:54:21 AM UTC-5, Andrew Haley wrote: > ... Being a fan of, and having programmed, Seymour Cray's parsimonious instruction sets and elegantly simple hardware architectures, I appreciated the design intelligence that Chuck Moore brought to the Forth virtual machine. Viewed in this light, Forth was a macro assembly language for a future Forth microprocessor -- entirely capable of executing Smalltalk as one of its higher level languages. It's amazing that Jim Bowery in 1981 has foreseen that Chuck Moore will develop a Forth microprocessor! Andrew, thank you so much for this interesting story! It opens another window of computing history for me. Up to now I only knew about the roots of modern computers back to Xerox PARC in Palo Alto and the DARPA people working there inventing the mouse, Ethernet, and bit mapped screens, where Steve Jobs had a visit and immediately picked up the significance - having LISA as result. But now I see that the people around PLATO have been earlier. There are several Wikipedia websites, as interesting to read, but from different point of views: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) - doesn't mention Forth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpress "Interpress is a page description language developed at Xerox PARC, based on the Forth programming language and an earlier graphics language called JaM." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript "PostScript is an interpreted, stack-based language similar to Forth but with strong dynamic typing, data structures inspired by those found in Lisp, scoped memory and, since language level 2, garbage collection" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format - doesn't mention Forth. The full story with links is available on http://www.oocities.org/jim_bowery/psgenesis.html Jim Bowery has an remarkable resume, too, with links: http://www.oocities.org/jim_bowery/ProfessionalFacts.html He even was Founding member of the Hutter Prize Committee: http://prize.hutter1.net/#committee - this is about compression and Artificial Intelligence.
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| From | Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-25 04:16 -0600 |
| Message-ID | <7v2dnWp8zYmKbSzNnZ2dnUVZ8m2dnZ2d@supernews.com> |
| In reply to | #17535 |
visualforth@rocketmail.com wrote: > Andrew, thank you so much for this interesting story! It opens > another window of computing history for me. Up to now I only knew > about the roots of modern computers back to Xerox PARC in Palo Alto > and the DARPA people working there inventing the mouse, Ethernet, > and bit mapped screens, where Steve Jobs had a visit and immediately > picked up the significance - having LISA as result. But now I see > that the people around PLATO have been earlier. The origins of this technology are pre-Xerox PARC. Doug Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute pioneered bitmapped displays and invented the mouse. DARPA funded it, true enough. J. C. R. Licklider was the central figure in all of this. Andrew.
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| From | albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-26 14:48 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <50b38142$0$3148$e4fe514c@dreader35.news.xs4all.nl> |
| In reply to | #17535 |
In article <bc4bba35-ba97-43ad-8ab5-7b3fec0cc359@googlegroups.com>, <visualforth@rocketmail.com> wrote: >On Saturday, November 24, 2012 5:54:21 AM UTC-5, Andrew Haley wrote: >> ... Being a fan of, and having programmed, Seymour Cray's parsimonious >instruction sets and elegantly simple hardware architectures, I >appreciated the design intelligence that Chuck Moore brought to the >Forth virtual machine. Viewed in this light, Forth was a macro assembly >language for a future Forth microprocessor -- entirely capable of >executing Smalltalk as one of its higher level languages. > >It's amazing that Jim Bowery in 1981 has foreseen that Chuck Moore will >develop a Forth microprocessor! Hardly amazing. The time was ripe. Round these times the Dutch Forth Chapter developed such a processor up and including a working emulator (running on a CP/M machine). It was not further pursued when Chuck Moore beat us to it. Groetjes Albert -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst
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| From | Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 09:12 -0600 |
| Message-ID | <nP-dna4E3uf6DzLNnZ2dnUVZ8oudnZ2d@supernews.com> |
| In reply to | #17494 |
Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> wrote: > On Nov 23, 2:15?am, "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_h...@notemailnotz.cnm> > wrote: >> So, I think it's clear his attack on Dijsktra was to "troll" for someone, >> perhaps me... Dijsktra and his ideas are very important to programming. >> >> Rod Pemberton- Hide quoted text - > > Really? Or did he just write down what a lot of other people thought > was obvious? Who, Dijkstra? No. > I nothing about the guy, but opinion seems quite divided about the > chap. Not divided enough to prevent him from being presented the Turing Award back in 1972. > I wonder if opinion is divided along the lines of those that went to > university (and thus had an opportunity to study him) and those that > didn't. Those that didn't would have simply "got on with it". Everybody has an opportunity to study. Dijkstra would be the first to say that he wasn't worthy of study, but his ideas certainly were. He made many contributions, but the most important ones were in the areas of concurrency <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_%28programming%29> and Structured Programming, e.g. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_To_Statement_Considered_Harmful> <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF> but these are just the tip of an iceberg. Of Structured Programming it's common enough to hear people say "Well, that's obvious!" but it wasn't at the time. > I read a few papers. I'm afraid it was gobbledygook to me. But I don't > have a Phd. :-( > > One of his "papers" that I read was an account of a trip to give a > speech to some bankers, and his travails with flight delays. I > understood that one. Sure, but the trip reports aren't really his technical contibutions. Andrew.
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| From | Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 22:00 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <2d7d5bec-4bfa-4726-8ddd-4f1ef3250c87@y5g2000pbi.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17502 |
On Nov 23, 8:12 am, Andrew Haley <andre...@littlepinkcloud.invalid>
wrote:
> Of Structured Programming it's common enough to hear people say "Well,
> that's obvious!" but it wasn't at the time.
I'm not all that big of a fan of "structured programming." That often
results in lengthy stair-step indented functions. Djikstra is
associated with Algol (which became Pascal etc.) and disliked Lisp ---
by comparison, I dislike Pascal etc. (although I did like HLA to some
extent) and am learning Scheme/Lisp --- so I'm moving in the opposite
direction.
See this thread for an example of my style:
https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/200c9fe301cc4e28/7ce0fe0e616a881b
This is an excerpt:
On Oct 31, 4:10 pm, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Oct 31, 4:58 am, Mark Wills <forthfr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The following routine is checking to see if a string is "}}" i.e.
> > consists of two consequtive right curly braces.
>
> > : }}? ( addr len -- addr len flag)
> > dup 2= if
> > over dup c@ swap 1+ c@ 125 = swap 125 = and
> > else
> > false
> > then ;
>
> > As can be seen, the first check is the length; if the length is not
> > exactly 2 then we just return false. If the length is 2 then we check
> > to see if both characters are ASCII 125. That's the bit I am looking
> > at and saying "Meh... seems a bit convoluted/lengthy.
>
> > Is there a better way?
>
> > I was thinking maybe:
>
> > ... c@ 125 OR swap 1+ c@ 125 OR 125 XOR 0=
>
> > Which is perhaps "cleverer" but not as clear as to the intention of
> > the code and no shorter...
>
> I think that nested conditionals should be avoided as much as
> possible. I just EXIT out. Here is mine:
>
> : }}? ( adr cnt -- flag )
> 2 <> if drop false exit then
> dup c@ [char] } <> if drop false exit then
> 1+ c@ [char] } <> if false exit then
> true ;
>
> Here is a more readable one with locals (the { is in my novice
> package):
>
> : }}? { adr cnt -- flag }
> cnt 2 <> if false exit then
> adr c@ [char] } <> if false exit then
> adr 1+ c@ [char] } <> if false exit then
> true ;
>
> Here is one with a macro to get rid of some of the redundancy:
>
> macro: bounce
> if false exit then ;
>
> : }}? { adr cnt -- flag }
> cnt 2 <> bounce
> adr c@ [char] } <> bounce
> adr 1+ c@ [char] } <> bounce
> true ;
>
> All of this is untested as I haven't yet installed a Forth system on
> my new computer. This is pretty simple though, so it should work.
>
> I don't like nested conditionals because they are ugly and confusing.
> In this case you are only testing three things, which isn't too bad.
> Imagine if you were testing more though --- you would have a stair-
> step Pascal-like function and it would be very confusing as to what
> was going on. This is Forth not Pascal --- use EXIT. The vast majority
> of the time, several things have to all be true to get a TRUE, so if
> anything is false, you can immediately EXIT with a FALSE and you are
> done.
>
> Also, don't be afraid to add some extra white-space as I did to make
> everything line up. There is no law that says your source-code has to
> be compressed up against the left margin. I make my source-code line
> up like this all the time --- see the novice package for examples.http://www.forth.org/novice.html
>
> Note that I did not factor out the test of the } char. That would be
> bad factoring. It is unlikely that you are going to test the same char
> more than once. In this case you are, but that is unusual. It is more
> readable if you explicitly test each char as I did above. This way the
> reader can easily see which chars are being tested for.
>
> P.S. Look at my alien-alphabet programhttps://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/...
> for an example of generating pattern-matching code and compiling it,
> at run-time. This is a very Forthy method, I think.
>
> P.P.S. Look at SPLIT in my novice package (list.4th) for code that
> splits strings up. This is primarily for comma-delimited data, such as
> from a database dump. That is somewhat similar.
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| From | Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 03:52 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <dd51f058-4975-461e-936e-b8291f96998c@nl3g2000pbc.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17489 |
On Nov 22, 7:15 pm, "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_h...@notemailnotz.cnm> wrote: > "Alex McDonald" <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote in message > news:b7c5c9ce-6cf0-4c32-929e-2e5e5c2389e6@bq2g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...> On Nov 21, 7:34 pm, Fritz Wuehler > > > Big words coming from somebody who never produced anything of > > > value (and certainly no code) in his whole life. "Those who can do; > > > those who can't teach." This typifies the idiot Dijsktra perfectly. > > > And then there's you, another idiot barber on usenet. > >http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ > > Ah, good, now I don't have to insult "Fritz" over Dijsktra. Thanks! > > "Fritz" is an anonymous re-mailer pseudonym. If this "Fritz" is the "Fritz" > I believe it is, he is supposedly a real programmer - one who programs big > IBM "iron". Hence, I doubt he's being the "Devil's Advocate" on this one. > So, I think it's clear his attack on Dijsktra was to "troll" for someone, > perhaps me... Dijsktra and his ideas are very important to programming. I doubt that Fritz was trying to bait you, Rod --- more likely, he was just supporting my contention that to be a programmer it is necessary to write programs that work. Most of the academians have seminal works (such as TeX for Knuth), but I've never heard of Dijkstra having any such program --- although I'm not really familiar with him, so maybe he does that I'm not aware of. If anybody here is a troll, it is Alex. Now he has even called barbers "idiots." It is not a good idea to insult the guy who cuts your hair, considering that it can take a couple of months to grow out a bad haircut --- also, when he gives you a shave, he is holding a razor over your jugular... This reminds me of the old proverb: "Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins --- that way, you are a mile away, and he's barefoot." Academics is a strange business though. For example, when I wanted to learn how LLRB trees worked, I went straight to Robert Sedgewick's writings (see the links from the Wikipedia page). I was amazed to discover that none of that Java code he provides actually works. He is using functions that are not provided at all, so the Java code won't even compile --- and his implementation is not doing things that the description said it should be doing, even if those missing functions were provided. I had expect to be able to just port his Java program over to Forth, but the job was much more difficult, as I had actually figure out how the algorithm worked and essentially write my program from scratch. I assume Sedgewick does have a working program somewhere, that he is not making public. Most likely, the reason why the broken program was published, was to prevent students from being able to "just port his Java program over to xxx." It is a major hassle for somebody like me though, as I'm not a student, and I just wanted a Forth version of the algorithm. I would have been better off to not go straight to the inventor's writings, but rather to go to an implementation by somebody else (for example, there are a couple of CL implementations) --- let somebody else figure out the algorithm and write a program that works, then just port that to Forth. BTS: I have Sedgewick's book on algorithms, which I bought at a used- book store (it is quite old). That book contains an algorithm for building a tree that is organized such that the most frequently accessed nodes are closest to the top. This is essentially what my symtab does. There are a couple of differences: 1.) His algorithm is optimal in the sense that it optimizes all of the search paths in total, which may result in some nodes being below nodes that have lower usage counts. By comparison, my algorithm just puts the nodes with the higher usage counts above the nodes with lower usage counts, which is optimal locally but not globally. 2.) His algorithm is a one-shot deal that builds the entire tree in a single swoop. By comparison, my algorithm builds the tree on the fly as nodes are added and removed. His algorithm doesn't require that the usage counts be stored with the nodes, as they can be discarded after the tree is built. My algorithm does require that the usage counts be stored with the nodes, which takes up more memory --- but my algorithm readjusts the tree as the usage counts go up and down relative to each other, whereas his tree never changes after it is built. I may implement Sedgewick's algorithm as a counter-point to symtab in my next release of the novice package. I've built up some code in the novice package, so I should do another release one of these days. My enthusiasm for producing public-domain code is quite dampened though, as everybody just says that it "sucks" without looking at it --- afaik, nobody has ever used my novice package in any program. I don't think this is because the novice package is bad, but it is just because nobody is writing applications in Forth. If people were actually writing application programs in Forth, they would have just used the novice package in so much as they found it to be useful, and they would have contributed code of their own in so much as they found it to be lacking. I was totally expecting to get contributions of code, but all I got was vulgar insults --- that is pathetic (I mean the c.l.f. crowd, not me). Lots of people claim that the FFL is "awesome" (that is Paul Rubin's term), but this doesn't mean that anybody is actually using FFL in application programs, as there really aren't any application programs. Writing tools for Forth is just beating a dead horse --- that is largely why I'm jumping over to Scheme now --- lots of people are writing application programs in Scheme, and I might as well be one of them.
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| From | Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 07:34 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <60a16420-a0b2-4344-b277-461eb30b1b5a@r4g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17497 |
On Nov 23, 11:52 am, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Nov 22, 7:15 pm, "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_h...@notemailnotz.cnm> > wrote: > > "Alex McDonald" <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote in message > >news:b7c5c9ce-6cf0-4c32-929e-2e5e5c2389e6@bq2g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...> On Nov 21, 7:34 pm, Fritz Wuehler > > > > Big words coming from somebody who never produced anything of > > > > value (and certainly no code) in his whole life. "Those who can do; > > > > those who can't teach." This typifies the idiot Dijsktra perfectly. > > > > And then there's you, another idiot barber on usenet. > > >http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ > > > Ah, good, now I don't have to insult "Fritz" over Dijsktra. Thanks! > > > "Fritz" is an anonymous re-mailer pseudonym. If this "Fritz" is the "Fritz" > > I believe it is, he is supposedly a real programmer - one who programs big > > IBM "iron". Hence, I doubt he's being the "Devil's Advocate" on this one. > > So, I think it's clear his attack on Dijsktra was to "troll" for someone, > > perhaps me... Dijsktra and his ideas are very important to programming. > > I doubt that Fritz was trying to bait you, Rod --- more likely, he was > just supporting my contention that to be a programmer it is necessary > to write programs that work. Most of the academians have seminal works > (such as TeX for Knuth), but I've never heard of Dijkstra having any > such program --- although I'm not really familiar with him, so maybe > he does that I'm not aware of. Stradivari made some of the world's finest musical instruments, but from what I can gather was not a gifted musician. You confuse (and others here do the same, so you're not alone on that score) engineering with science. > > Academics is a strange business though. For example, when I wanted to > learn how LLRB trees worked, I went straight to Robert Sedgewick's > writings (see the links from the Wikipedia page). I was amazed to > discover that none of that Java code he provides actually works. He is > using functions that are not provided at all, so the Java code won't > even compile --- and his implementation is not doing things that the > description said it should be doing, even if those missing functions > were provided. I had expect to be able to just port his Java program > over to Forth, but the job was much more difficult, as I had actually > figure out how the algorithm worked and essentially write my program > from scratch. I assume Sedgewick does have a working program > somewhere, that he is not making public. Most likely, the reason why > the broken program was published, was to prevent students from being > able to "just port his Java program over to xxx." It is a major hassle > for somebody like me though, as I'm not a student, and I just wanted a > Forth version of the algorithm. I would have been better off to not go > straight to the inventor's writings, but rather to go to an > implementation by somebody else (for example, there are a couple of CL > implementations) --- let somebody else figure out the algorithm and > write a program that works, then just port that to Forth. Translating a novel from German to English does not make you an author in either language. What you describe (Java to Forth, or CL to Forth) isn't programming. > > BTS: I have Sedgewick's book on algorithms, which I bought at a used- > book store (it is quite old). That book contains an algorithm for > building a tree that is organized such that the most frequently > accessed nodes are closest to the top. This is essentially what my > symtab does. There are a couple of differences: > 1.) His algorithm is optimal in the sense that it optimizes all of the > search paths in total, which may result in some nodes being below > nodes that have lower usage counts. By comparison, my algorithm just > puts the nodes with the higher usage counts above the nodes with lower > usage counts, which is optimal locally but not globally. > 2.) His algorithm is a one-shot deal that builds the entire tree in a > single swoop. By comparison, my algorithm builds the tree on the fly > as nodes are added and removed. His algorithm doesn't require that the > usage counts be stored with the nodes, as they can be discarded after > the tree is built. My algorithm does require that the usage counts be > stored with the nodes, which takes up more memory --- but my algorithm > readjusts the tree as the usage counts go up and down relative to each > other, whereas his tree never changes after it is built. > > I may implement Sedgewick's algorithm as a counter-point to symtab in > my next release of the novice package. I've built up some code in the > novice package, so I should do another release one of these days. My > enthusiasm for producing public-domain code is quite dampened though, > as everybody just says that it "sucks" without looking at it --- > afaik, nobody has ever used my novice package in any program. I don't > think this is because the novice package is bad, but it is just > because nobody is writing applications in Forth. If people were > actually writing application programs in Forth, they would have just > used the novice package in so much as they found it to be useful, and > they would have contributed code of their own in so much as they found > it to be lacking. I was totally expecting to get contributions of > code, but all I got was vulgar insults --- that is pathetic (I mean > the c.l.f. crowd, not me). You had an extensive review of the claims you made for symtab. Which is actually a splay tree iirc, but you hadn't read any of the literature and claimed, contrary to what you write above, never to have looked at or used other people's code. It didn't meet the performance claims you made of it at the time, and describing it as "vulgar criticism" is (as usual) hyperbolic.
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| From | Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 09:57 -0600 |
| Message-ID | <EYednSUGe7d1ATLNnZ2dnUVZ8mudnZ2d@supernews.com> |
| In reply to | #17503 |
Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> wrote: > On Nov 23, 11:52?am, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> I doubt that Fritz was trying to bait you, Rod --- more likely, he was >> just supporting my contention that to be a programmer it is necessary >> to write programs that work. Most of the academians have seminal works >> (such as TeX for Knuth), but I've never heard of Dijkstra having any >> such program --- although I'm not really familiar with him, so maybe >> he does that I'm not aware of. > > Stradivari made some of the world's finest musical instruments, but > from what I can gather was not a gifted musician. You confuse (and > others here do the same, so you're not alone on that score) > engineering with science. Actually, no such excuse is needed for Dijkstra: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_multiprogramming_system Andrew.
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| From | Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 20:09 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <103e94e1-7107-4b89-87a6-b2fb4c0d2881@ah9g2000pbd.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17503 |
On Nov 23, 8:34 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > You had an extensive review of the claims you made for symtab. Which > is actually a splay tree iirc, but you hadn't read any of the > literature and claimed, contrary to what you write above, never to > have looked at or used other people's code. It didn't meet the > performance claims you made of it at the time, and describing it as > "vulgar criticism" is (as usual) hyperbolic. Symtab isn't a Splay-Tree. Passaniti was promoting the Splay-Tree as an alternative to symtab: https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/c37b473ec4da66f1/ You routinely express strong opinions on subjects that you know nothing about. You are exactly the kind of person that I won't allow in the Straight Forth community --- you and Passaniti and Elizabeth Rather deserve each other.
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| From | Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 04:53 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <7c9720d2-c299-4459-867e-46d4341867d4@l12g2000vbj.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17517 |
On Nov 24, 4:09 am, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Nov 23, 8:34 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > > > You had an extensive review of the claims you made for symtab. Which > > is actually a splay tree iirc, but you hadn't read any of the > > literature and claimed, contrary to what you write above, never to > > have looked at or used other people's code. It didn't meet the > > performance claims you made of it at the time, and describing it as > > "vulgar criticism" is (as usual) hyperbolic. > > Symtab isn't a Splay-Tree. Passaniti was promoting the Splay-Tree as > an alternative to symtab:https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/... Yes, I remembered incorrectly. The rest still stands. > > You routinely express strong opinions on subjects that you know > nothing about. One example would do. Do you have one? > You are exactly the kind of person that I won't allow > in the Straight Forth community --- you and Passaniti and Elizabeth > Rather deserve each other. Is it just God-a-fearin' straight white guys who get to sign up?
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| From | Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 14:32 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <4499931.41UDQqBsvd@sunwukong.fritz.box> |
| In reply to | #17522 |
Alex McDonald wrote: >> You are exactly the kind of person that I won't allow >> in the Straight Forth community --- you and Passaniti and Elizabeth >> Rather deserve each other. > > Is it just God-a-fearin' straight white guys who get to sign up? Being a homophobic redneck is required. Show up with your gun, and you are in. Hugh reminds me of the guy from Texas at the start of Catch-22, who said "only people like me should be allowed to vote". -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://bernd-paysan.de/
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| From | Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 21:01 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <b0d9017f-9d8a-4dc0-9d12-1a9be0530ada@jl13g2000pbb.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17522 |
On Nov 24, 5:53 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > Is it just God-a-fearin' straight white guys who get to sign up? You don't have to be white --- I don't judge people by their race. You don't have to be God-fearing either --- I'm not --- considering that I likened "God's Chosen People" to cows, I'm certainly on Yahweh's kill list (I'd be worried if I thought that Yahweh actually existed, which I don't). You don't have to be a guy --- I'm okay with women programmers; I've never met one, but I would like to. Just try to behave in a respectable manner --- that is the best way to get respect --- also, you have to write programs that work.
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| From | Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-25 02:22 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <58232eae-68f2-43f2-8139-4e41de0d61bd@n5g2000vbk.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17537 |
On Nov 25, 5:01 am, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Nov 24, 5:53 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > > > Is it just God-a-fearin' straight white guys who get to sign up? > > You don't have to be white --- I don't judge people by their race. > You don't have to be God-fearing either --- I'm not --- considering > that I likened "God's Chosen People" to cows, I'm certainly on > Yahweh's kill list (I'd be worried if I thought that Yahweh actually > existed, which I don't). > You don't have to be a guy --- I'm okay with women programmers; I've > never met one, but I would like to. > > Just try to behave in a respectable manner --- that is the best way to > get respect --- also, you have to write programs that work. Respect is a two way street.
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| From | Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-25 02:27 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <5f45a583-f208-4d0f-9758-80b2103886b9@r13g2000vbd.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17522 |
On Nov 24, 12:53 pm, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > On Nov 24, 4:09 am, Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > You routinely express strong opinions on subjects that you know > > nothing about. > > One example would do. Do you have one? > Still waiting. Either provide evidence or withdraw the statement.
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| From | awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 19:12 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <1ku0o3b.uluf6aco4oqlN%awegel@arcor.de> |
| In reply to | #17497 |
Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> wrote: > that is > largely why I'm jumping over to Scheme now You're leaving - that's great news. Only - you really should get some kind of therapy before jumping anywhere, or you will just keep falling over your ego, probably hurting more people (and yourself) on the way. Not that i particularly care about you, but you are mistreating truth and mobbing people to an extent where it really pisses me off that such stuff happens in CLF. To put it positively: Fix yourself, and you might even be able to keep a job in the future. Ciao brutto.
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| From | Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-23 22:39 -0800 |
| Message-ID | <49850f5e-6f95-499b-9f86-1f4483ebf5fa@qi10g2000pbb.googlegroups.com> |
| In reply to | #17505 |
On Nov 23, 11:12 am, awe...@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) wrote: > Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > that is > > largely why I'm jumping over to Scheme now > > You're leaving - that's great news. > > Only - you really should get some kind of therapy before jumping > anywhere, or you will just keep falling over your ego, probably hurting > more people (and yourself) on the way. > > Not that i particularly care about you, but you are mistreating truth > and mobbing people to an extent where it really pisses me off that such > stuff happens in CLF. > > To put it positively: Fix yourself, and you might even be able to keep a > job in the future. > > Ciao brutto. Wasn't Brutus the guy who killed Julius Ceasar? There is a Shakespearean play about that. Does this mean that Elizabeth Rather is Ceasar? Instead of always attacking me, why don't you write a package of code for novices and put it in the public domain? If it is comparable to mine, or even halfway useful, then I would take more notice of you as somebody to pay attention too --- right now, I just see you as being another Passaniti wannabe, hoping that Elizabeth Rather will praise you too. Try to make your code a little bit more readable than you did here: https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/dd8e30fcc7589749 You didn't provide stack-picture comments for any of your functions --- it was obvious that you were obfuscating your code. This reminds me of the famous Nietzsche quote: "Nor are poets clean enough for me --- they muddy the water to make it appear deep." I'm just learning Scheme to better myself. Given that I mostly only program in Forth, I really don't know a lot about computer-science theory. Straight Forth is going to have closures, and Scheme is famous for closures --- so it makes sense for me to learn Scheme --- I'm largely taking my time in coming out with Straight Forth so that I can learn more Scheme in the meantime, as I intend for Straight Forth to borrow heavily from Scheme. There are a lot of aspects of Scheme that are a no-go for micro-controllers (such as tagged data (dynamic OOP)), but there are a lot of aspects that can be carried over (such as closures). I'm always going to be a Forth programmer though --- Forth is my bailiwick --- besides that, desktop-computer software is given away for free, and micro-controllers get sold for money, so dropping Forth in favor of Scheme would be economically foolish. I do think that it is a good idea to drop ANS-Forth though, as it is a complete failure.
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| From | awegel@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-24 16:54 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <1ku2i07.ytrmr61jcyrsdN%awegel@arcor.de> |
| In reply to | #17520 |
Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Nov 23, 11:12 am, awe...@arcor.de (Alex Wegel) wrote: > > Hugh Aguilar <hughaguila...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > that is > > > largely why I'm jumping over to Scheme now > > > > You're leaving - that's great news. > > > > Only - you really should get some kind of therapy before jumping > > anywhere, or you will just keep falling over your ego, probably hurting > > more people (and yourself) on the way. > > > > Not that i particularly care about you, but you are mistreating truth > > and mobbing people to an extent where it really pisses me off that such > > stuff happens in CLF. > > > > To put it positively: Fix yourself, and you might even be able to keep a > > job in the future. > > > > Ciao brutto. > > Wasn't Brutus the guy who killed Julius Ceasar? There is a > Shakespearean play about that. Does this mean that Elizabeth Rather is > Ceasar? No, it's to say that you are a moron. > Instead of always attacking me, why don't you write a package of code > for novices and put it in the public domain? If it is comparable to > mine, or even halfway useful, then I would take more notice of you as > somebody to pay attention too I'm not writing about silly packages that nobody needs here, especially not for getting your attention. You got *my* attention because you misbehave so badly that you hurt other people for your egos sake. I hang out in CLF for roughly 2 decades now (in contrast to what some wannabe group-oldests here fantasized), and you are easily one of the most abusive persons i experienced here. Stop *your* lowly attacks on other people here, and i might stop attacking you. I might just stop attacking you anyway, because i'm fed up of our sick game since long, and the only reason you're actually not in my kill filter is that i think you should be watched, and if possible, be kept from commiting further offenses. > --- right now, I just see you as being > another Passaniti wannabe, hoping that Elizabeth Rather will praise > you too. You already mentioned that you're paranoid, and that you dream of CLF people chasing you. That's one of the things i believe you (even though -as you might know inside- they really should be after you). Concerning the names you just dropped: You successfully avoided answering (or even understanding) their objections towards your claims by swamping CLF with lies and backbiting for about 3 years now. Congrats, prick. > Try to make your code a little bit more readable than you did here: > https://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread > /dd8e30fcc7589749 Oh, another Hugh citation. Actually that thread is yet another example of you not living up to your outrageous mouthwork, even not being able to read and understand specifications, then stumbling over your own praised "packages" shortcomings, then loosing the challenge by quite a margin (taking you about 3 days instead of the few hours you thought it would). Later you wrote that "you made a challenge", and that you finished "sufficiently fast". LOL. That kind of little lies probably got you layed off already. Fix yourself, and don't think that you can fool all bystanders on the cheap. > You didn't provide stack-picture comments for any of your functions Anyway the task then was to find out about the alien invasion *before* it happens, so it was rather pointless to waste time for stack comments. The aliens still laugh about how your package made their invasion a triumphant success. > --- it was obvious that you were obfuscating your code. *You* thought that. First you wrote that you like my solution, and you want to include it in "your" package. Later you wrote that you don't understand it w/o stack comments. LOL. BTW my solution was <1000 characters long, just a letter-sized print in rather big writing, and didn't have any hidden "tricks" or inclusions of obscure "packages". > This reminds me of the famous Nietzsche quote: > "Nor are poets clean enough for me --- they muddy the water to make it > appear deep." You repeat yourself. My answer to this: Nietzsche died poor, but at least he did. > I'm just learning Scheme to better myself. My point was: You should start by tackling your personal & social defects if you really want to better yourself. Stop trying to make yourself appear bigger than you are if you don't wnat to get belittled, stop lying about others to divert from their criticism if you want to communicate with anyone, actually try to understand what others wrote instead of beating them up right away. It doesn't hurt so much to back down from exaggerated claims from time to time, it surely hurts less than trying to push them through against reality. Just fixing this first thing (brag less) can reduce the trouble you run into (=call for) by an estimated order of magnitude (!) As it stands, your praises of your software look much sleazier than the "sleazy sales people" you always love to criticize. > Given that I mostly only > program in Forth, I really don't know a lot about computer-science > theory. That's a false excuse. As JP wrote: Programming isn't just Coding. You'd at times better listen to what people say, or you'll die stupid. So that was a longer version. Point being: Stop pissing around, then maybe we can talk about technical topics someday. (I actually did look at your package, partly because i wondered why the heck i have to load 60K of code for a simple program like your alien language solution [which then adds another 1.5K of source w/o comments], a problem that takes only <1K using plain forth with no extra packages.) PS: If you dislike my language - well, it's part of the message. I've finally gotten tired of your repeating crap.
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| From | "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotz.cnm> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-11-25 05:09 -0500 |
| Message-ID | <k8sqfs$a1n$1@speranza.aioe.org> |
| In reply to | #17524 |
"Alex Wegel" <awegel@arcor.de> wrote in message news:1ku2i07.ytrmr61jcyrsdN%awegel@arcor.de... > Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> wrote: ... > You got *my* attention because you misbehave so badly that you hurt > other people for your egos sake. > Hugh, I think he may have mistaken me for you ... I gave him a large list of the reasons he shouldn't post, after he unjustly attacked me. > I hang out in CLF for roughly 2 decades now (in contrast to what some > wannabe group-oldests here fantasized), [...] That's true. You post once or twice a year. You post nothing in regards to Forth. You don't ask about Forth. You don't post replies helping others with Forth. Why are you here at all? It seems you're just here to complain or agree. What you do is incite. If there is an argument, especially one which doesn't involve YOU, you attempt to increase the anger further. How are you any better than Passaniti? > I might just stop attacking you anyway, because i'm fed up of our sick > game since long, and the only reason you're actually not in my kill > filter is that i think you should be watched, and if possible, be kept > from commiting further offenses. > While I don't agree with Hugh's attacks on Ms. Rather, many can be taken as humorous or ludicrous or using Ms. Rather as a proxy for one of Hugh's apparent enemies: "Forth Gods" ... I do agree with Hugh's attacks on Passaniti. Passanitti has harshly attacked people on comp.lang.forth for years. There is thread on c.l.f. in 2002 with people complaining about him. There are probably others even earlier. If you look at his posting history, you'll see that all John did for his first ten years posting to Usenet was insult people. That's it. That's all he did. He leaves for a while, then returns, no wiser ... > You already mentioned that you're paranoid, and that you dream of CLF > people chasing you. That's one of the things i believe you (even though > -as you might know inside- they really should be after you). > > Concerning the names you just dropped: You successfully avoided > answering (or even understanding) their objections towards your claims > by swamping CLF with lies and backbiting for about 3 years now. > Congrats, prick. I don't recall anyone attacking YOU in the past six years, except me, recently, when you unjustly attacked me. You post so infrequently that no one is even _aware_ that you post here, or remember what your name is ... > > Try to make your code a little bit more readable than you did here: > > [link] > > /dd8e30fcc7589749 > > Oh, another Hugh citation. > > Actually that thread is yet another example of you not living up to your > outrageous mouthwork, even not being able to read and understand > specifications, then stumbling over your own praised "packages" > shortcomings, then loosing the challenge by quite a margin (taking you > about 3 days instead of the few hours you thought it would). > > Later you wrote that "you made a challenge", and that you finished > "sufficiently fast". LOL. That kind of little lies probably got you > layed off already. Fix yourself, and don't think that you can fool all > bystanders on the cheap. > I'd swear that was directly from Passaniti ... Are you his proxy? Is he spoofing you? Rod Pemberton
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