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How Forth can be compared?

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  How Forth can be compared? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-12 16:25 +0000
    Re: How Forth can be compared? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 11:14 -0800
      Re: How Forth can be compared? empty-buffers <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> - 2015-02-12 20:11 +0000
        Re: How Forth can be compared? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 12:35 -0800
          Re: How Forth can be compared? Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2015-02-12 13:14 -0800
          Re: How Forth can be compared? visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2015-02-12 13:23 -0800
      Re: How Forth can be compared? Paul E Bennett <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2015-02-13 09:05 +0000
    Re: How Forth can be compared? albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2015-02-12 19:38 +0000

#36502 — How Forth can be compared?

I found an interesting atricle:
http://www.itworld.com/article/2881655/your-code-is-far-more-chaff-than-wheat.html

#v+
 If you're a software developer and somebody asked you what percentage of
 the code you write represents the actual functionality versus how much is
 filler, fluff or code just required by the language to actually run? 95%?
 75%? 50%? No matter what you guessed, you're probably way off because new
 research has discovered that only about 5% of written code captures the
 core functionality it actually provides.
#v-

I wonder, how Forth could be scored in such comparison.
-- 
"Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it always
was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible
croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".

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#36507

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 11:25:56 AM UTC-5, empty-buffers wrote:
> I found an interesting atricle:
> http://www.itworld.com/article/2881655/your-code-is-far-more-chaff-than-wheat.html
> 
> #v+
>  If you're a software developer and somebody asked you what percentage of
>  the code you write represents the actual functionality versus how much is
>  filler, fluff or code just required by the language to actually run? 95%?
>  75%? 50%? No matter what you guessed, you're probably way off because new
>  research has discovered that only about 5% of written code captures the
>  core functionality it actually provides.
> #v-
> 
> I wonder, how Forth could be scored in such comparison.
> -- 
> "Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it always
> was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible
> croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".

Forth is nearly 100% wheat, because Forth is leaving the chuff out by definition of the Forth language and by definition of that article: 

"The authors claimed that the wheat of a function could be encapsulated by small sets of keywords, which they called the "minimum distinguishing subset" or MINSET. The MINSET can be derived by breaking a method down into lexemes (i.e., code delimited by space or punctuation), discarding what's not important to the behavior of the function and mapping the remaining ones to keywords. Those keywords then make up the MINSET."

It's even better than that!

With Forth there is nothing not important to the behavior of a function!

"Forth is the programming language which stripped off all unnecessary attachment and distraction leaving pure logic to work with."
Quote from "Forth for Education - 4E4th and 4E4th IDE", Page 12 
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef12/papers/bruehl.pdf

It's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth.
Does anybody know how to post a comment to this article 
"Your code is far more chaff than wheat" or how to contact Phil Johnson ?

Phil Johnson wrote a lot of interesting articles, one example: 
"Swift ascends the programming language ranks"
http://www.itworld.com/author/Phil-Johnson/

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#36511

In comp.lang.forth, visualforth@rocketmail.com wrote:

> It's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth.
> Does anybody know how to post a comment to this article 
> "Your code is far more chaff than wheat" or how to contact Phil Johnson ?

Please, note: his article is based on the research of a group of computer
scientists (see the link to PDF file); he just commented their conclusions.
-- 
"Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it always
was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible
croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".

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#36513

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 3:11:34 PM UTC-5, empty-buffers wrote:
> In comp.lang.forth, visualforth.com wrote:
> 
> > It's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth.
> > Does anybody know how to post a comment to this article 
> > "Your code is far more chaff than wheat" or how to contact Phil Johnson ?
> 
> Please, note: his article is based on the research of a group of computer
> scientists (see the link to PDF file); he just commented their conclusions.
> -- 
> "Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it always
> was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible
> croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".

Thanks for your comment, I overlooked this. Shame on me.
Phil Johnson only mentioned Java, and the "Study of "Wheat" and "Chaff" in Source Code" says they only looked at Java. Quite interesting, this study.

But it is still true, upgrading my observation to Albert's comment:
Forth is 110% wheat, because Forth is leaving the chuff out by definition of the Forth language - and multiplies the fruit. And Forth is the programming language which stripped off all unnecessary attachment and distraction leaving pure logic to work with.

And still, it's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth. 
Otherwise he would have written about it, because a comparison is striking.

By the way, I guess 'Java' is the worst case anyway.
When Java was first announced, I read that Java shall be some kind of upgrade of Forth. But when I saw Java code, I was wondering about it.

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#36518

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 12:35:48 PM UTC-8, visua...@rocketmail.com 

> By the way, I guess 'Java' is the worst case anyway.
> When Java was first announced, I read that Java shall 
> be some kind of upgrade of Forth. But when I saw Java code, 
> I was wondering about it.

Java is the Anti-Forth.  All Hail Java!

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#36519

On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 3:35:48 PM UTC-5, visua...@rocketmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 3:11:34 PM UTC-5, empty-buffers wrote:
> > In comp.lang.forth, visualforth.com wrote:
> > 
> > > It's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth.
> > > Does anybody know how to post a comment to this article 
> > > "Your code is far more chaff than wheat" or how to contact Phil Johnson ?
> > 
> > Please, note: his article is based on the research of a group of computer
> > scientists (see the link to PDF file); he just commented their conclusions.
> > -- 
> > "Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it always
> > was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible
> > croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".
> 
> Thanks for your comment, I overlooked this. Shame on me.
> Phil Johnson only mentioned Java, and the "Study of "Wheat" and "Chaff" in Source Code" says they only looked at Java. Quite interesting, this study.
> 
> But it is still true, upgrading my observation to Albert's comment:
> Forth is 110% wheat, because Forth is leaving the chuff out by definition of the Forth language - and multiplies the fruit. And Forth is the programming language which stripped off all unnecessary attachment and distraction leaving pure logic to work with.
> 
> And still, it's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth. 
> Otherwise he would have written about it, because a comparison is striking.
> 
> By the way, I guess 'Java' is the worst case anyway.
> When Java was first announced, I read that Java shall be some kind of upgrade of Forth. But when I saw Java code, I was wondering about it.

It's interesting to read this research report. They really don't know FORTH, but they are looking for it. I am sure that's why they do their research. 

Quote:
Words are the smallest meaningful units in most languages.
We group them into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into novels and technical papers like this one. Some words in a sentence are more important to its meaning than the others. Indeed, from a few distinctive words in a sentence, we can often guess the meaning of the original sentence.

Comment: 
Indeed, from a few distinctive WORDS in a definition, we can nearly always guess the meaning of a definition.

Quote:
This work follows recent, seminal studies on the "uniqueness" and the "naturalness" of code.

Our study is inspired by recent work on keyword-based programming. 
Keyword programming is a technique that translates keyword queries into Java expressions.

Comment:
They could have had it easier, using FORTH.

Quote:
This promising, new programming paradigm rests on the untested assumption that
1) small sets of distinctive keywords characterize code and 
2) humans can produce them.

Comment:
Yes, humans can produce FORTH code! 
FORTH is well tested since decades, reliable, and still promising.

Quote:
A lexicon is a set of words... MINSETS are built from words in a lexicon.

Comment:
In FORTH it is called dictionary.

Quote:
What is a "word"? We are free to define the lexicon, the set of (allowed) words. A natural, basic lexicon is the set of lexemes; a lexeme is a delimited string of characters in code, where space and punctuation are typical delimiters; it is an atomic syntactic unit in a programming language.

Comment:
Didn't we always like to have a definition of "WORD"?

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#36530

visualforth@rocketmail.com wrote:

> On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 11:25:56 AM UTC-5, empty-buffers wrote:
>> I found an interesting atricle:
>> http://www.itworld.com/article/2881655/your-code-is-far-more-chaff-than-wheat.html
>> 
>> #v+
>>  If you're a software developer and somebody asked you what percentage of
>>  the code you write represents the actual functionality versus how much
>>  is filler, fluff or code just required by the language to actually run?
>>  95%? 75%? 50%? No matter what you guessed, you're probably way off
>>  because new research has discovered that only about 5% of written code
>>  captures the core functionality it actually provides.
>> #v-
>> 
>> I wonder, how Forth could be scored in such comparison.
>> --
>> "Yes, this is the bad end you've come to, and two and two is - as it
>> always was..." - began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint,
>> barely audible croaking noise and said, for the last time: "SEVEN".
> 
> Forth is nearly 100% wheat, because Forth is leaving the chuff out by
> definition of the Forth language and by definition of that article:
> 
> "The authors claimed that the wheat of a function could be encapsulated by
> small sets of keywords, which they called the "minimum distinguishing
> subset" or MINSET. The MINSET can be derived by breaking a method down
> into lexemes (i.e., code delimited by space or punctuation), discarding
> what's not important to the behavior of the function and mapping the
> remaining ones to keywords. Those keywords then make up the MINSET."
> 
> It's even better than that!
> 
> With Forth there is nothing not important to the behavior of a function!
> 
> "Forth is the programming language which stripped off all unnecessary
> attachment and distraction leaving pure logic to work with." Quote from
> "Forth for Education - 4E4th and 4E4th IDE", Page 12
> http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/ef12/papers/bruehl.pdf
> 
> It's obvious that Phil Johnson doesn't know Forth.
> Does anybody know how to post a comment to this article
> "Your code is far more chaff than wheat" or how to contact Phil Johnson ?
> 
> Phil Johnson wrote a lot of interesting articles, one example:
> "Swift ascends the programming language ranks"
> http://www.itworld.com/author/Phil-Johnson/

If you just dig a little on the web-site you would find his email address is 
<phil_johnson@itworld.com>


-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET.....<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy.............<http://www.hidecs.co.uk>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 TBA (due to  re-location)
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

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#36509

In article <slrnmdpl0i.2pl.empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@Ferrycy.localdomain>,
empty-buffers  <empty.buffersYOU-DONT-WANT-THIS@gmail.NEITHER-THIS.com> wrote:
>I found an interesting atricle:
>http://www.itworld.com/article/2881655/your-code-is-far-more-chaff-than-wheat.html
>
>#v+
> If you're a software developer and somebody asked you what percentage of
> the code you write represents the actual functionality versus how much is
> filler, fluff or code just required by the language to actually run? 95%?
> 75%? 50%? No matter what you guessed, you're probably way off because new
> research has discovered that only about 5% of written code captures the
> core functionality it actually provides.
>#v-
>
>I wonder, how Forth could be scored in such comparison.

An interesting observation of my Pentium II assembler (the
simplified version) was that the total space needed to
represent opcodes and operands, plus the total space needed
to express all hex codes was more characters than the actual
sources.

So Forth can score pretty good, like 110%.

Non-Forthers would wonder how that is even possible.

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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