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Chuck Moore Holds Forth
FFP, Combinator Calculus and Parallel Forth
by Baldrson
In his 1977 Turing Lecture, John Backus challenged computists to break free of what he called "the von Neumann bottleneck". One of the offshoots of that challenge was work on massive parallelism based on combinator calculus a branch of mathematics that is far closer to Forth's formalism than parameter list systems (which are more or less lambda calculus derivatives).
The prolific Forth afficionado Philip Koopman did some work on combinator reduction related to Forth but seems not to have followed through with implementations that realize the potential for massive parallelism that were pursued in the early 1980s by adherents of Backus's Formal Functional Programming paradigm. Given recent advances in hierarchical grammar compression algorithms, such as SEQUITUR, that are one step away from producing combinator programs as their output, and your own statements that Forth programming consists largely of compressing idiomatic sequences, it seems Backus's original challenge to create massively parallel Formal Functional Programming machines in hardware are near realization with your new chips -- lacking only some mapping of the early work on combinator reduction machines.
It is almost certainly the case you are aware of the relationship between combinator reduction machines and Forth machines -- and of Backus's challenge. What have you been doing toward the end of unifying these two branches of endeavor so that the software engineering advantages sought by Backus are actualized by Forth machines of your recent designs?
Chuck Moore: What can I say? Backus did not mention Forth in his lecture. He probably didn't know of it then. Yet Forth addresses many of his criticisms of conventional languages.
He thinks a language needs or benefits from a formal specification. I grew up worshiping Principia Mathematica 'till I learned how Goedel refuted it. The result is that I distrust formal representations. For example, the ANSII Forth standard does not describe Forth, but a language with the same name.
Yes, I am struck by the duality between Lisp and Lambda Calculus vs. Forth and postfix. But I am not impressed by the productivity of functional languages. Even as research tools, they have failed to live up to their promise. By that I mean to do something with computers that I couldn't do more easily in Forth.
I designed the memory for the c18 to occupy the same area as the processor. This means small, fast and smart. c18 can respond to a bus request by fetching from its memory, accessing off-chip or performing a calculation. The 25x avoids the von Neumann bottleneck by making up to 27 memory accesses at the same time (2 off-chip). And its multiple buses do not substitute a network bottleneck for a memory one.
Standard code will be in the ROM of each computer. How this is customized in RAM and the computers assigned tasks is left to the ingenuity of the programmer, not a compiler. Automatically generated or factored code has never impressed me. Nor has automatic place and route for circuit boards or silicon. They are both an order-of-magnitude from human performance. Because humans understand the problem, judge the results and cheat as required.
Marginalizing of the blind
by Medievalist
When I built my first Internet node, the web did not yet exist, and one of the amazing things about the Internet was how friendly it was to the blind.
Now, with some computer experts estimating that over 50% of the Internet is incomprehensible to braille interfaces, and most computer operating systems devolving to caveman interfaces ("point at the pretty pictures and grunt") we seem to be ready to take the next step - disenfranchising the merely color-blind.
I realize that colorforth is not inherently discriminatory, in that there are a great many other languages that can be used to do the same work. The web is also not inherently discriminatory, because it does not force site designers to design pages as stupidly as, for example, Hewlett-Packard.
Would you care to comment on the situation, speaking as a tool designer? How would you feel if a talented programmer were unable to get a job due to a requirement for colored sight?
CM: I'm amazed at how effective blind programmers can be. I rely so strongly upon seeing the code that it's hard to imagine listening to it. Yet I know it can be done. Not being color-blind, it's hard to appreciate the degree of information loss. But it's less than being blind.
My goal is to develop tools that augment my abilities. If others can use them, fine. It would be foolish to lose an opportunity to explore or excel just to conform to some equalitarian philosophy. Too often our culture seeks the lowest common denominator.
20-20 vision is required for fighter pilots. I have no qualms about requiring color vision for programmers. Everyone does not need to be a programmer.
But in fact, color is merely a property of words that helps to distinguish them. As is intensity, size, font, volume and tone. I'm sure colorForth will be translated into these other representations. I, myself, will be exploring spoken colorForth. (As soon as I can decipher PC sound cards.)
Massively Parallel Computing
by PureFiction
The 25X system reminded me of IBM's Blue Gene computer, where a large number of inexpensive CPU cores are placed on a single chip.
The biggest problem in dealing with a large number of small cores lies in the programming. I.e. how do you design and code a program that can utilize a thousand cores efficiently for some kind of operation? This goes beyond multi-threading into an entirely different kind of program organization and execution.
Do you see Forth (or future extensions to Forth) as a solution to this kind of problem? Does 25X dream of scaling to the magnitude that IBM envisions for Blue Gene? Do you think massively parallel computing with inexpensive, expendable cores clustered on cheap dies will hit the desktop or power-user market, or forever be constrained to research?
CM: Forth is a massively pragmatic language: do whatever you can to solve a problem. Its strength is in the ease of violating whatever rules it has. The 25x is similarly pragmatic. I don't know how to program it yet, but I'm confident I can. It's just another level of factoring.
The parallelism provided by the 25x has a different slant from other parallel architectures. The computers are not identical. I expect many will have different ROM and different interface to the real world. This asymmetry is a powerful clue as to how applications will be factored.
A 10x10 array of 25x chips is an easy board to build. At 50 Watts, it needs as much power as a notebook. That's 2500 computers providing 6M Mips. I can't imagine programming them any other way than Forth.
The advantage of Forth in this kind of context is that it scales. Forth is the machine language, Forth is the high-level language, Forth is the task-control language, Forth is the supervisory language. Each of these has a different vocabulary, but they share syntax, compiler and programmer skills.
Back to the array of 25x chips. Each chip could be on a vertical and horizontal serial bus with 10 others. A half-duplex bus requires a computer to manage, so that accounts for 200 computers. Now whatever the application, data must be provided. Say 1GHz Ethernet. Data (and program) is received, distributed and crunched. The assignment and coding of computers follows the data flow. Results are routed back to Ethernet, or displayed or whatever. It's a nice programming problem, well within the ability of a human to organize.
Will this ever reach the mass market? I don't know.
The direction of 25x Microcomputer...
by Midnight Ryder
The 25x concept looks like it could really a damned interesting idea. But one of the questions in my mind is where you want to head with it? Is this something that is to be used for very specialized research and scientific applications, or is this something that you envision for a general 'desktop' computer for normal people eventually?
Secondly, if you are considering the 25x for a desktop machine that would be accessible by people that aren't full-time geeks, what about software? Forth is a lost development art for many people (It's probably been 10 years since I even looked at any Forth code) and porting current C and C++ application would be impossible - or would it? Is there a potential way to minimize the 'pain' of completely re-writing a C++ app to colorForth for the 25x machines, which could help to speed adoption of a platform?
CM: At this stage the 25x is a solution looking for a problem. It's an infinite supply of free Mips. There's no obligation to use them all, or even very many. But they can effectively be used to eliminate hardware. To bit-bang what would otherwise need a controller. So if you want video or audio or radio or ...
The first applications will doubtless be embedded. These offer greater volume, less software and less market resistance than a general-purpose computer. I see 25x reaching the desktop as dedicated appliances rather than universal golems.
I'm not interested in recoding C applications. My experience indicates that most applications are hardware-dependent. The 25x is as large a change in the hardware environment as I can imagine. This changes the program so much it might as well be rethought and recoded. The most efficient way to do that is Forth.
Forth is a simple, interactive language. Its learning curve is steep with a long tail. You can be productive in a day/week. This depends only on how long it takes to memorize pre-existing words. Good documentation and management helps mightily. I'd rather train programmers than fight code translators.
That said, there are those who look at the mountain of existing applications and want to mine it. C to Forth translators exist and with some pre/post editing could produce code for the c18 core. How to distribute the application among 25 tiny computers would be a good thesis.
Quick question
by jd
(If you could microcode the "instruction set", all the better. A parallel processor array can become an entire Object Oriented program, with each instance stored as a "thread" on a given processor. You could then run a program without ever touching main memory at all.)
I'm sure there are neater solutions, though, to the problems of how to make a parallel array useful, have it communicate efficiently, and yet not die from boredom with a hundred wait-states until RAM catches up.
What approach did you take, to solve these problems, and how do you see that approach changing as your parallel system & Forth language evolve?
CM: The 25x could implement a multi-thread application nicely indeed. Except that most applications expect more memory that a c18 core has. Whereupon memory remains the bottleneck.
It's important to choose problems and solutions that avoid using off-chip memory. Even so, with 25 computers to support, I expect that every memory cycle will be utilized. The computer controlling memory can be smart about priorities and about anticipating requirements. For example, it could guarantee enough access to support display computers.
And the nice thing about memory-mapped communication is that a computer need not be aware of its environment. It's an ordinary Forth program accessing data asynchronously. Delays are invisible, as is synchronization. Of course, due care is required to avoid lock-up loops.
These conjectures are fun. But in a year we'll have real applications to review. And a much better appreciation of the advantages and drawbacks of so many tiny computers.
Programming languages...
by Midnight Ryder
This one would probably require a bit more time to answer than you probably have available, but a quick rundown would be cool: Where do you see programming languages headed -vs- where do you think they SHOULD be headed?
Java, C#, and some of the other 'newer' languages seem to be a far cry from Fourth, but are languages headed (in your opinion) in the proper direction?
CM: I've been bemused with the preoccupation of new languages with text processing. I've been accused of not providing string operators in both Forth and colorForth. Indeed, I haven't because I don't use them. Editing a file to pass on to another program never struck me as productive. That's one reason I chose pre-parsed source, to break the dependence upon strings and text processors.
Languages are evolving, as evidenced by the new ones that arise. But as with natural evolution, the process is not directed. There is no goal to approach nor any reward for approaching it. But whatever progress you might perceive, I don't. New languages seem only to propose new syntax for tired semantics.
These languages are all infix. Which is extraordinarily clumsy for anything but arithmetic expressions. And even those are comfortable only because we learned them in Algebra 101. Do you remember the learning curve?
Does everyone really think that 50 years into the computer age we have hit upon the ultimate language? As more and more C code accumulates, will it ever be replaced? Are we doomed to stumble over increasingly bloated code forever? Are we expecting computers to program themselves and thus save civilization?
I'm locked in the Forth paradigm. I see it as the ideal programming language. If it had a flaw, I'd correct it. colorForth uses pre-parsed source to speed and simplify compilation. This solves a non-problem, but it's neat and worth exploring. At least it proves I haven't gone to sleep.
What about memory protection?
by jcr
From the web pages, I don't see any mention of access control.
Can this processor be used in a multi-user, general-purpose mode?
CM: If you had a chip, you'd physically control access to it. It doesn't make sense for another person to share your chip. He can get his own. Certainly an individual c18 has too little memory to multi-task. And I doubt 25 computers could run 25 tasks.
But the 25 computers can certainly perform more than one task. They have to share resources: communication buses, off-chip memory and interfaces. Access is negotiated by the computer in charge of the resource. There is no hardware protection. Memory protection can be provided by the access computer. But I prefer software that is correct by design.
Communication with other computers, via internal or external buses, is subject to the usual problems of scheduling, routing and authentication. Internally, at least, my goal is to minimize delay rather than attempt protection. I anticipate spectacular crashes while software is developed. (Have you ever crashed 2500 computers?)
Where is forth going?
by JanneM
I learned forth early on in my programming career; it was very memory and CPU efficient, something that was important on early microcomputers. It was also a great deal of fun (though far less fun to try and understand what you wrote a week earlier...). Today, even small, cheap microcontrollers are able to run fairly sophisticated programs, and it is far easier to cross-compile stuff on a 'big' machine and just drop the compiled code onto the development board.
Forth has (in my eyes) always been about small and efficient. Today, though, embedded apps are more likely to be written in C than in forth, and the "OS as part to the language" thing isn't as compelling today as it was in the eighties. Where is forth being used today, and where do you see it going in the future?
CM: Forth is being used today as it always has been. In resource-constrained applications. I think they will always exist. I'm creating some with the tiny c18 computers in the 25x. I imagine molecular computers will be limited when they first appear.
Personally, I don't mind losing a mature market that can afford abundant resources. Such applications aren't as much fun. But Forth isn't restricted to small applications. Even with huge memories and fast processors, small, reliable programs have an advantage.
The major project cost has become software, to the dismay of managers everywhere. On-time, bug-free software is the grail. Forth doesn't guarantee it, but sure makes it easier. Will this ever be convincingly demonstrated? Will management ever value results over procedures?
The currently popular language is selected by uninformed users. The only thing in favor of such democratic choice is that it's better than any other. But why would anyone want to debug 1M lines of code instead of 10K?
What's the next Big Computational Hurdle?
by DG
Now that sub-$1k computers are running in the GHz range, it seems that all the computational tasks on a common desktop system are not processor-bound.
3D, rendered-on-the-fly games get well over 30 frames per second at insanely high resolutions and levels of detail. The most bloated and poorly-written office software scrolls though huge documents and recalculates massive spreadsheets in a snap. Compiling the Linux kernel can be done in less than 5 minutes. And so on.
It seems that the limiting speed of modern computers is off the processor, in IO. What then, do you forsee coming down the pike that requires more processor power than we have today? What's the underlying goal you intend to solve with your work?
CM: Memory is cheap. I don't mind wasting memory as long as it's not full of code that has to be debugged.
Likewise, Mips are cheap. The trick is to find productive ways to waste them. A Pentium waiting for a keystroke isn't very clever.
So here's a huge pool of Mips. What can you do with them? Voice recognition comes instantly to mind. Image recognition close behind. The brain deploys substantial resources to these tasks, so I suspect a computer must.
IO is indeed a bottleneck, but not in principle. If you can't get data from the camera to the computer, combine them. Put the image recognition algorithms in the camera. Analyse, reduce, compress data at the source. Meanwhile, it helps to have multiple paths off-chip.
revolutionary
by rnd
What is the most revolutionary (i.e., it is scoffed at by those in control/power) idea in the software industry today? Explain how this idea will eventually win out and revolutionize software as we know it.
CM: Forth! But then I haven't been out looking for revolutionary ideas. I like the phrase Baldrson used above: compressing ideomatic sequences. If you do this recursively, you obtain a optimal representation. I see no way to get a more compact, clear, reliable statement of a problem/solution.
Forth clearly revolutionizes software as most know it. It could lead to efficient, reliable applications. But that won't happen. A mainstay of our economy is the employment of programmers. A winnowing by factor 100 is in no one's interest. Not the programmers, the companies, the government. To keep those programmers busy requires clumsy languages and bugs to chase.
I don't have to be glib or cynical. Those are facts of life. Society must cope with them. But I don't have to. Nor you. There are niches in which you can be creative, productive, inspired. Not everyone can be so lucky.
Forth as intermediate language
by Ed Avis
Many high-level languages compile into C code, which is then compiled with gcc or whatever. Do any use Forth instead? I understand Forth is a stack-based language: doesn't that present problems when compiling for CPUs that mostly work using registers?
CM: I remember my shock at learning that Fortran compiled into Assembler, that then had to be assembled. A language that can be translated into another is clearly unnecessary. Truely different languages cannot be translated: C into Lisp.
Forth would make a fine intermediate language. But why have an intermediate language? It introduces another layer of confusion and inefficiency between the programmer and her computer. Macros were invented to support compiling directly to machine code.
Stacks are a compiler-friendly construct. Every compiler has to use one to translate infix notation to postfix. If this stack solution has to be assigned to registers, it's an extra step. Forth uses stacks explicitly and avoids the whole subject.
Register-based CPUs have more problems than just the complexity of their compilers. Their instructions must contain register addresses, which makes them longer and programs bigger. And it is rare that every register can be used in every instruction.
Moreover registers need to be optimized. After assigning system registers, performance depends on how well the remaining registers are handled. Compilers can optimize infix expressions better than humans. But such expressions are no longer the preferred means of doing arithmetic. DSPs and super-computers integrate difference equations.
Design guidelines encourage code with many subroutine calls each with only a few arguments. This is the style Forth employs. But it plays havoc with optimization, since register usage must be resolved before each call. So apart from being unnecessary and difficult, optimization has no effect on good code.
whatever happened to next i though that was going to be the end all . 100% object oriented. ect ect. why not just work with whats there. im tired of having to scramble and learn new languages. hey why don we make perl OOP i mean true OOP not that bolted on crap. linux G4 perl/OOP NEXT hey what a deal or maybe clawhammer if they can get their act together
This brings me back to the BBS days. One of the best people in the area was a blind judge. He used a text->speech program which allowed him to do everything on the BBS that everyone else did. Since the BBS's were all text-only anyway the interface was easy. Nowadays we have so many sites that are design-centric that I can't see how people with disabilities get around.
I always strive to keep my sites simple and clean (like slashdot) so that the site can be more easily used by anyone, anywhere.
This isn't to say that flash, etc. shouldn't exist, but I don't think that they belong on a business-oriented site.
Travis
No, this guy posts this a few times a day. Has been doing it for weeks. I don't know why he thinks it's funny.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Being blind really ruines most of your life. At least from what I am able to determine. Generally I can't see how you can do anything but stay on disability without some really magical help
The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
"Now, with some computer experts estimating that over 50% of the Internet is incomprehensible to braille interfaces"
Isn't this because over 50% of the Internet is porno?
Well. What the hell am I supposed to do now??? He didn't finish his goddam dark tower series. I'm sad, but dammit... grrrrrr...
I really enjoyed many of his books, but he should have focused on his, imho, best series of books.
kaxman
Everyone on slashdot has a journal.
The language that Chu Moo created for the control of telescopes in astronomy became so valuable for use in personal robotics that Mind.Forth for robots has resulted at the http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/ website where more than three hundred Open Source AI projects are rushing to introduce real artificial intelligence. Mind.Forth has a companion version in MSIE JavaScript at http://mind.sourceforge.net/ -- with Tutorial and hard-copy Troubleshoot print-out options.
I even get the impression that Chuck would be happy that I noticed this about him. It just makes me think that there will be no revolution coming from the Forth camp. Which, I hadn't really expected, anyway. But, I'll cross it off my list of possible revolution starters, anyway.
One of the things that can never get enough power is compression. Right now the next generation of image and video compression looks like JPEG 2000 and Motion JPEG 2000. I have tested it and it seems like a miracle compression, it consistently works at least 4x better than jpeg compression. Apply that to video and you have something incredible but very VERY expensive. He said it was a solution looking for a problem, and there it is. I think that HDTV video disc standards are leaning toward mpeg4 which would be a mistake in my opinion. Motion JPEG 2000 would be much more forward thinking if someone could pull it off. I say go for it Chuck.
More immediatly, using a 25x chip in a digital camera to compress large pictures to JPEG2k could save lots of space and more importantly, quality. Seems like a perfect mariage to me!
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The thing I have always liked best about Chuck Moore is that, whether you agree with him or not on a particular point, his ideas are always interesting and original. He's not afraid to follow his own judgment wherever it leads, and while he may perhaps end up following more blind alleys than a conventional thinker, it's people like him who will also make the most breakthroughs. In this day of C++/Java/XML/insert-other-orthodoxy-here, it's good to have someone like Chuck Moore around to remind us that computing can still be exploratory and experimental, and that you can still make a living without following the herd.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'm not bashing Forth. I think zeal can be a healthy thing. But, you know, zeal about a concept, not about one isolated tool/approach.
Nate
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
Forth clearly revolutionizes software as most know it. It could lead to efficient, reliable applications. But that won't happen. A mainstay of our economy is the employment of programmers. A winnowing by factor 100 is in no one's interest. Not the programmers, the companies, the government. To keep those programmers busy requires clumsy languages and bugs to chase.
To be honest, to me this invalidates everything else he said. If you have to depend on a conspiracy to figure out why your pet language is not universally adopted, then you are not living in reality.
I used Forth a long time ago. In fact, I advocated using Forth for the game company I worked at because I liked its simplicity and compactness. But I realize now that the practical measure of a language is how easy it is to maintain it... and Forth is not that language.
It kind of reminds me of APL zealots (yes, there used to be those, and there probably still around in hiding). They claimed much of the same things... that APL should be the language that everyone uses (I remember someone trying to convince me that APL would be a great language for an accounting system). They would NEVER admit that APL was hard to maintain.
I think this guy needs to pull his head out of the clouds and realize that there just might be reasons other than conspiracy that Forth is not more widely used. Forth had its time in the sun, and it was eventually rejected.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This is NOT a critisism, though, more wishful thinking. What was said was fascinating, and there is a lot there to think over. Doubly so, since it IS just the tip of the iceberg.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I get very uncomfortable around fanatics like Chuck - I've been an engineer for a long time and I usually find that anyone with only one tool is going to try and redefine all problems to be fixable with that tool. I've used Forth for years, but I also use C/C++, Perl, Lisp, etc. Each tool for a different problem. Forth has a well-defined and useful niche (it's longevity proves that), but it's far from something that 99% of us will ever use.
That said, his processor is really cool looking - wish I had some to play with. I can think of a lot of problems that could be solved with these and Forth. But I think that the fanaticism here will put off many backers...
I would disagree. While the Free Software Foundation, for instance, does not explicitly condone "programming regardless of skill"-- contributing to gcc does require some aptitude, free software allows anyone to program--without regard to financial means, or the willingness to sign NDA's.
Before color forth, color vision was not a prerequisate for programmers. Why should it be now? (Why are boldface, italic, and roman not appropriate analogues for red green and yellow, anyway?)
This guy designing the language and the chip is interesting to me.
Its mentioned in the technical manual for the Enterprise 1701-D that the software was designed long before the hardware. This seems unnatural considering the ease with which you can change software compared to hardware but there are advantages.
EROS for example is a OS that is struggling to apply some really cool ideas becuase there is not enough hardware support for its permission paradigm. Alternatively, it took MS over 10 years to implement all the hardware features built in to the 486 for OS's to use (not just the 32bit bus).
3d libraries are being written in hardware code now, after the attempt to do it in software couldn't handle the massively parallel nature and speed requirements. Now there are crypto cards that simularly add hardware designed functions to prop up where software is slow.
So what I wonder is, is it really so unfeasable or unreasonable to design the software first and then the hardware?
He repeatedly goes on about how fourth is so much more compact and efficient than c, pascal, and java.
Can he show a system with 1mm+ lines of fourth?
Don't give me the bs about rewriting a 1mm+ c program with 10k lines of fourth. How about taking a 25mm+ line c application and rewriting it in 1mm+ lines of fourth?
Can he show a system such as a 500 concurrent user database written enterly in fourth?
Maybe he should change is stock ' fourth is best programming language ' answer to 'fourth is bets embedded, small system language '.
I can already hear his answer 'why would I want to have a 500 concurrent user database system?'
Is the web server, os, etc which serves his home page written in fourth?
If he ever refused to hire somebody based on their inability to see color, I bet he'd lose in Court, lose bad too.
Chuck would have to prove that the ability to percieve colors in MANDATORY to coding, which it is not. It's understandable that people in wheel chairs don't run marathons, because a prerequisite to running is having legs. The only prerequisite for programming is a brain that contain knowledge of the language and some way to relay thoughts. There's braile keyboards for th second, and I'm assuming the previous poster has a brain.
If guys are successfully sueing Hooters to be able to work there (actually I haven't heard about this ina while, does anyone have an update?), then blind programmers could defintey when this case.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Looks like my question was too far out there to get moderated up. Perhaps it's a lame question. I believe it's a solid question, so I'll pose it again, maybe some of you have comments:
A trinary computer system is based on architecture which is much more efficient than binary, especially for moving large numbers around. Since you are designing your own processors, have you considered the possibility of building (and coding on) a trinary system? It seems like trinary eclipses the revolutionariness of even colorForth, by taking us into a whole nuther dimension of architecture...
-WP
information is immaterial
Probably similar to the reason I think it's very funny that YOUR post could accurately be applied to the content of many slashdot posters. :-)
information is immaterial
i can't beleive you douchebag morons who upvoted
this troll whore! oh wait, i forgot you moderators all worship perl, so its okay to say "(any.language.but.perl.here) sucks!"
There's tons of other Forth dialects that actually meet his criteria of being a true Forth- and they run under every OS out there from DOS all the way to Linux.
ColorForth is his implementation of his idea of what Forth should be for him. If you can use it, fine. If not, find another Forth- I'm sure there will be other implementations that code for the x25 CPU at some point. People aren't using Strostroup's implementation of C++ or K&R's implementation of C either- for that very reason.
Go hit Taygeta Scientific's website for implementations of Forth that you can try out. For Linux users, I suggest BigForth from Bernd Paysan, BTW- it's a native code generating implementation with some GUI support that shows some promise for making usable apps, etc.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
DUH! This troll has been around for a while. Why can't the terrorists have blown them up, instead? At least it would have produced one positive outcome.
Please, if you read a public weblog, like Slashdot, K5, etc, you are going to get a LOT of bogus "reports", trolls, spam, hate-gunk, etc. When reading, the important thing is to look at the source, and even if the source is "trustable", see if there's anything confirming the claim elsewhere.
I'll use myself as an example. Before the karma cap, I had reached 720 points, with a typical increase of around 10 karma/week. At first glance, that's a fairly respectable total. On the other hand, when you realise I can easily reach a figure of around 40 posts in a week, a more accurate picture emerges. An average of one point of karma for every four posts, which works out to two points for every eight posts.
In other words, for all my "impressive" total, I was still only writing stuff that people found to be interesting, useful AND verifiable, only one time in eight. That leaves seven times in eight that my information is either of little worth or just plain wrong.
So, if I can be wrong 7 times in 8, so can anyone else. THAT is why you need to verify. If you can't find two genuinely independent sources who say the same thing, then you probably want to treat the information with suspicion. Ideally, you want three or four, before accepting even a single thing.
Of course, there are going to be real innovative thinkers, who see things that others can't. But you still should check. In this case, you might want to find out their reasoning and see if it makes sense. The old adage that "truth is beauty" is usually worth keeping in mind. Crick & Watson "discovered" DNA by simply building models until they had one that was beautiful. Actually figuring it all out never crossed their minds.
The same is true with any "innovative" thinking. Where you just can't check the reasoning, don't have the time, or knowledge necessary, simply look to see if it has an inner beauty. If it does, there's probably -something- to it. If it doesn't, it's most likely waaay out there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"There is no hardware protection. Memory protection can be provided by the access computer. But I prefer software that is correct by design."
That statement alone should point out that this guy has no clue about real world software design. People make mistakes, big ones, and they're not always caught in the debug cycle.
He sounds like a real smart guy, who's written alot of cool things ON HIS OWN. Once you break out of the individual 'hacker' environment and have to teach and share with others, alot of this stuff falls apart...
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
oh, the bravery of being out of range...
I don't know where your comment about EROS comes from. EROS stands for Extremely Reliable Operating System, and has cool stuff like transparent persistence for all programs and a pure capability security system. EROS was built from the ground up to run on commodity Intel boxes. The OS is not ready for prime time because it is being re-written in C (from C++). It is GPL'ed, and it has mucho potential.
****Gfx Scrollbar Special case hit!!*****
We, at Goatse.cx, mourn the unprecedented loss of life on Tuesday, September 11, 2001._ _______________
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Let it be known terrorists, YOUR ASS IS NEXT!
As others have pointed out, this is a notorious troll. However, I'm a big Dark Tower fan too and didn't know about this until 2 weeks ago (maybe you haven't seen this either?) It's the prologue to his next Dark Tower book. Sounds like a really cool story too, although like the last one, it won't advance the main plot too much.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
1+ million line programs do NOT mean useful complexity- in fact, one should question the application that actually needs that many lines of code. Furthermore, many people lump the lines of code together in a system, artificially inflating the numbers- almost a "my system's bigger and better than yours" competition.
Also of note is that few people have attempted to make a "500 user concurrent database"- ever. Have YOU ever written one? If not, why are you wasting your time posting here when you should be out flogging your product in competition with the likes of IBM, Oracle, etc.? I'm pretty sure if someone wanted to, they COULD make one in Forth (as there HAS been relational databases written in Forth...)
And his answer would be right for that- he doesn't need one for the problems he's solving. Doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it- it just means someone hasn't come along using Forth to do the task in question.
And in answer to your webserver question, it's very likely that nobody coding in Forth has gotten around to doing a Webserver as most of the people using Forth are doing embedded systems that don't have network connectivity, etc. If there was one, he might be using it.
Just because nobody's using it for that task doesn't mean that your choice is better for the task or that the language in question is poor for the task. Icon, a string and symbolic programming language from one of the inventors of Snobol is an ideal (as in, much better than C or C++) language for making compilers- nobody's using it because it's not well known and everybody and his dog follows the crowd and uses what everyone else is using.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I've seen a complete accounting system written
in APL. I've also seen a complete banking system
also written in APL and deployed across tens of
small finanical companies and hundreds of sites.
Both worked well.
After reading the results of the interview, I really like Chuck Moore. Why? Simple - he's got a language he likes and develops further for his needs when nessisary, and when it comes to what everyone else thinks, he doesn't care!
That's not nessiarily a bad thing, in some ways. How different would colorFourth be if, for instance, he stopped to consider the effect on color blind or blind people trying to use the langauge? What about if he stopped to concern himself deeply with how to get colorFourth to become accepted as a mainstream language?
Instead, he concentrated on creating something he felt was the perfect language for him - not really for anyone else. There's something very admirable about that. Seems like projects these days (I mean Open Source projects in particular - commercial projects obviously tailor to as many people as possible) end up giving up part of thier original focus to instead appeal to a much broader audience within thier application style grouping. He doesn't care about how (x) implemented (y) - if it doesn't fit the applications he's been working on, then he ain't adding it in.
On the flip side, that means that colorFourth, for instance, isn't going to get a whole lotta acceptance. His comment about blind programmers struck me as callous, but, what the hell - it pretty much comes down to being 'his personal language'. If that's how he treats is, then yeah, to program in colorFourth (Chucks personal language) then you have to either learn to adapt it yourself (font changes for color blind people, or possibly tonal changes for those who have the source read to them by text to speach programs.)
But the one comment that struck me as wrong was his thinking that the reason more people don't use it is a matter of conspiracy. *SIGH* No, Chuck - if you build a language and tailor it pretty much completely for yourself, well... who the heck is gonna really care that much since you dont?
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Functional, side-effect-less programs and primitives
Parallel evaluation of arguments
Parallel evaluation of mapping primitives
See here for a recent reference.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Boldface, Italic, and Roman *ARE* appropriate analogues, he already made reference to that.
Also.. I think what's he's saying is, why should everything on earth cater to the lowest common denominator? It shouldn't.
You don't need 20/20 vision to fly a plane. if you want to work for the Air Force in particular, to fly their jets, you have to have perfect vision. Period.
So.. if you want to work with Color Forth, as he implemented it, you need to be able to see colors. I fail to see how this is bad.
Everything relating to computers does not need to be built for the lowest common denominator.
Yes, but the set of people who want to be programmers and the set of colorblind people are NOT the same.
I am a colorblind programmer. I program in C, PHP, and Perl regularly. I have no qualms with users that, endowed with color vision, enhance their programming abilities by using colorized editors. My coworkers, who all use syntax highlighting, come to my black and white display and squint at the screen, almost unable to read the code displayed.
However, the sentiment embodied here is truly ugly. I mean does this guy have any idea how frustrated potential fighter pilots feel when they are struck down by their imperfect vision? If you want to fly a plane to defend your country and ideals, the inability to do so caused by an imperfection beyond your control would be devastating.
There are a myriad of alternatives. Even within Forth it would be possible to represent the structures currently shown as color with other types of highlighting. Moore, get a clue.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
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SCREW YOU KATZ
I admire Forth, it's a fascinating language. But would I consider it for a project, even an embedded one? No way!
"Languages are evolving, as evidenced by the new ones that arise. But as with natural evolution, the process is not directed." Mr. Moore notes. He missed the fact that evolution *is* directed -- anything that survives, flourishes. LISP, Forth, and C have a very long history, but the C-style syntax has completely dominated the development of new languages, including C# and Java. Why? Because it's easier read, easer to write, easier to develop with.
When I have C questions, I have gazillions of code samples to borrow and learn from. (cf: http://www.codecatalog.com/ ) There are multiple sites devoted to Perl. PHP. When developing with Forth I get a "not invented here" kind of thing: each of the few, small libraries available is customed to a specific home-grown flavor of the language. Yes, I can write my own this or that, but *why*?
I'm interested in amateur robotics, for which Forth might be perfect. But what do I see? Nearly 100% of robots are written in 1) assembly, 2) BASIC, or 3) C. Assembly is of course specific to each chip, and totally nonportable. BASIC is readable, but only somewhat reusable: each flavor of BASIC is incompatible. C immediately rises to the top -- even if I have to write all the libraries myself, the *language* doesnt change from underneath me.
Mr. Moore's inventions deserve attention for their audacity in completely upsetting the status quo. If his approach is superior, if he is uninterested in the other 100% of the software world to follow, fine. But where are are all of Moore's beautiful chips? Applications? Where are people using Forth on other machines?
Show me!
- j
I soon noticed what looked like a cool new feature: named function parameters. You can now access stack slots by name instead of always juggling the parameters with operations like DUP, ROT, SWAP, etc.
After using this new capability, though, I realized that much of the fun of writing Forth code is figuring out clever ways to juggle the stack. Using named parameters makes the language kind of boring, combining C's explicit memory management headaches with the performance questions of an interpreted language.
I guess I just never got deep enough into the Forth ways to take much advantage of the magical "extend the language with itself" capabilities. OTOH, Lisp can do some of these tricks and provides automatic memory management.
Oh well, my favorite language this year is Ruby, anyway. It brings together a lot of good concepts from other languages in a nice way that's easy to understand; it even has a little bit of the extensibility that Forth exhibits.
PDP-11 BASIC+2, VAX FORTRAN (and probably other languages from DEC) were compiled to threads of the language run-time system. VAX/Alpha object language is a stack-oriented language.
Threads are an enormously powerful tool for compiler writers. They allow one to emit consistent sequences (idioms) from a "ridiculously" easy front end.
At run-time, the loader transfers control to the familiar indirect loop, which gnaws through the "object" code.
One of the pure charms of programming was to see the PDP-11/VAX/Alpha FORTH inner interpreter.
Why the hell are all you low UID slashoids coming out of the woodwork and mouthing off all of the sudden? I tell you, it's worse than a plauge of trolls -- at least the trolls are occasionally amusing. Now pipe down before we carpet troll you like Bush II is gonna do to Afghanastan!
A Forth web-server can be found at http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/httpd-en.html.
Sorry, I can't get past the lameness filter for links because I'm stoopid.
> Forth is relevant? prove it!
Forth is everywhere.
Look in the Solaris kernel repository, there are even Forth source code.
The Java virtual machine is a specific Forth-like implementation.
Even Postscript looks like Forth enough to claim its legacy.
You should rather demostrate us that this obviously useful language does *not* exist, instead of trolling...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I am not speaking directly about APL, but more about its successors: J and mostly K. I used to think it was hard to stare at a page of K, but after programming in it for a few months, I find it very hard to look at Java code. Code compaction allows the programmer to get the big picture in one page of code. I do not need to constantly flip between multiple pages of code to determine what it happening. I have found myself not using bookmarks or tags in code. Just as you became trained to stare at C-like statements, you also become trained to look at APL/J/K sentences.
There are some very powerful ideas in the APL family. The ability to read code like prose, where each symbol on the screen has an english equivalent (e.g., the "," operator is pronounced join). I was very sceptical when my roommate showed me one of these languages, K, but soon we were deubugging incredibly complex functions but just speaking the phrases aloud. For example, in K:
Even more powerful is how idioms are built from this. This is what is referred to as building your vocabulary:
Yes, you can abstract it away as a function in this very simple example, but the point is more of how powerful idioms can be and how you build your vocabulary, especially, when interacting with people across the room. Compare this to the C equivalent:
I am very new to this whole APL/J/K thing, so things are probably a bit off.
In the C-like languages idiomatic exblockquotessions are not nearly as clear. I only have a 19" monitor, so I use K to make my monitor a JumboTron.
-jAn international airport in Saudi Arabia...
The collision avoidance system on the Space Shuttle...
The first pocket language translator...
Numerous Atari console games...
Some of these used a Forth implementation for a given CPU, one of them uses a special chip that was built by Harris Semiconductor, the RTX2000, one of the first Forth chips.
Forth is not used not because it's worse or not-useful. Forth is not used because it's so different from just about everything else developed to code for computers.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
no, but give me a week to learn visual basic and i could try.
If this is all you have to do with your time,
perhaps, you can take that big joint you are smoking illegally in your parents' swimming pool, and stuff it where the sun doesnt shine. I'll
let you use what little brain cells you have left to figure out where the sun does not shine.
Alternatively, you could read some of Jon Katz's articles at Slashdot. That will anesthetize you more than marijuana.
Thank you and have a LSD-induced weekend.
Woot_spork
Now it's (score : -1, redundant)! At least one moderator has a sense of humor!
He strongly advocates using only forth to an extreme degree.
Be wary of individuals who do not practice what they preach.
I've used c to build a 500 concurrent user db and used c++ to build a 100+ concurrent user distributed system. Been there and done that.
Line counting means counting semicolons or other tokens.
My understanding is that the bytecode language of Python is very stack based/rpn-like...It'd be a curious exercise to compile Python to Forth instead (Fython?)
Also, for more Forth-like fun, check out MUCKs, MUDs with an internal Forth language. (I spent far too much time hacking the internals of what would later become DaemonMUCK, almost ruining my college career...:)
And the horses that rode in on you
~ now you know
I was going through A Brief Introduction to Forth, and in its section on Factoring, I came across this:
good god, I would suck at this language. How many times have I named variables, even functions, 'foobar,' or otherwise named stuff with some combination of those letters? I've always wondered what names I might end up dooming my children with... I've even used raboof a few too many times to spice things up :(
—
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Yes, it is called a Balanced Ternary and it is in the seminumerical volume of Knuth. It is very interesting because it provided some interesting ways of parallelizing arithematic at the bit level (i.e., you can borrow the your neighbors value when subtracting -- I think this is how it goes). Anyways, it is by far the elegant representation that I have seen.
-j
>he's gratuitously adding the requirement for color vision to programming.
He's doing nothing of the kind. He's using color in ONE particular programming environment, which you may use or not use as you see fit. Get over yourself.
(Or, you could abandon programming altogether, since it gratuitously requires the use of hands to type the code.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Others have defended Moore based on other statements he made on the subject. But I, too, noticed the statement "everyone does not need to be a programmer", and think it is unforgivable. The only thing that could mitigate it is an apology from Moore.
And how is this different from OO?
I realise that Forth has little in common with C++ or Java, but the whole point of OO is that you can define new types that model the solution domain. So in Forth you define new 'words' that model the solution domain, and this is so very different?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Symbolics had a C to Lisp compiler for their Lisp machines... nothing is impossible to someone with enough time :-)
Don't forget that every time you boot a Mac (or other Open Firmware hardware) you use a nice Forth interpreter rather a brain-dead BIOS.
Many of the more negative comments I'm seeing seem to be missing one or two points about the Forth programming environment (we call it that since it's more than just a language).
Since he lacks feature xxx his ideas aren't relevant: Many of the comments in this regard seem to stem from an assumption that unless a programming environment includes support for multiple protected users, protected memory, protected devices, protective APIs, and so on, it cannot be a relevant environment. What I'd like some of you to consider is that, on the contrary, there are many more programming applications which simply don't require those mechanisms. Sure, they're great to have, when you need them. Your microwave doesn't require multiuser support; your watch doesn't require protected memory; set-top boxes don't require CORBA bindings; CCD firmware doesn't; engine management, FedEx barcode scanners, and so on. The list is nearly infinite, and can extend all the way up to your desktop, if you want. Certainly, we all know many many environments where those tools help us get our work done, but that doesn't invalidate the environments where they aren't needed. Think beyond your desktop; every CPU in the world doesn't have to be running Netscape. Implement what you need or want, throw the rest away.
Progamming isn't for everyone: Some of you are turning this into a real strawman. Come on, you don't really believe Chuck is dissing someone who wants to program but has a challenge (such as blindness), do you? Re-reading the interview should show you that he has an interest in other representations of programming environments (other than text based ones). Furthermore, Chuck himself has poor eyesight. Thus, he's created his own programming environment that uses very large characters and uses color to replace punctuation, thus saving him precious screen real estate. If anything, you'd see he embodies the attitude, "Change the system to match your wants." I believe with a little thought that it should be obvious that he isn't seeking to exclude people with different abilities.
// boba
: newword forth love if honk then ; ;
executed-right-now
: nextword to be defined
In color forth it's:
newword forth love if honk then
executed-right-now
nextword to be defined
in this case instead of color I used bold to mean "define this word and start compiling" and italics to mean "execute this word when you see it". Non-highlighted words would be compiled into the previous defintion.
That's ALL there is to colorForth (aside from a couple more colors). It would be TRIVIAL to have alternative cue for visually impaired programmers and I'm surprised CM didn't comment on that immediately. I think CM was off the mark in his comment but I don't think he intended it the way it came across.
I spent my previous three years as a Forth programmer (now I'm in a C++/Tcl project) and I was ashamed as a programmer to see how close-minded many programmers were. Forth may not be the ultimate language but it has a LOT to teach about the art of computer programming.
Most of Forth's critics cannot even tell you BASIC facts about the language, it's mainly just fear and ignorance. Very bizzare coming from a group that usually prides itself on it's diversity.
There is more than 100 times the currently produced software per annum that is needed and desired. So, if you did make programming 100 times more efficient you wouldn't be in danger of putting any programmers out of work except for those who could not adapt to the more efficient methods.
I've written a web server in 200 lines of Forth (runs on GNU Forth, is part of the gforth-0.5.0 package). It's not an overfeatured web-server like Apache, it doesn't do SSL, doesn't allow any other language for server-side scripting than Forth, but I don't need that. If you want Apache, you can have Apache. Read more about it in http://jwdt.com/~paysan/httpd-en.html
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
Whether or not there will be any revolution coming from Chuck depends on whether someone uses one of his chips to start a revolution.
But don't confuse Chuck and Forth. Chuck has pursued his own very personal and eclectic path. If you are wondering how you are going to fit a SAX-like event driven XML parsing into a low resource microcontroller, search for JenX. Using Forth as a CGI server is even easier, at least in a Linux environment with gforth (Gnu Forth).
The impression I have from comp.lang.forth is that when most serious Forth programmers hear from Chuck, they stop, say, "that's very interesting" and then go back to doing what they normally do, whether that is embedded work or work in a PC environment.
Chuck Moore says he has no qualms requiring colour vision. And youse Americans want him to apologise.
I expect he means that if there was something intrinsic about colour in programming, he wouldn't have any qualms about making colour vision a requirement for programming.
But whatever he means, he either has qualms or he doesn't. Claiming that he did when he doesn't would be that thing which used to be called a "lie".
On the other hand, the whole thing is a complete storm in a teapot, because there is nothing intrinsic about colour vision, or even vision, in ColorForth. The foundation is in fact much more accessible to vision impaired than some "connector set" programming paradigms. It's all just names of things, with each name preceded by a token to indicate one of a limited set of possible states. Since eight states is 3 bits, you just need three distinct voice attributes: say, male/female, high/low pitch, strong/normal timber and you've got AuralForth. Or three rich text attributes and you have RichTextForth.
But he's just one guy building his tools to build his tools as he goes. Since he says he's interested in voice recognition, and having AuralForth would be part of that for him, we might see AuralForth built. But someone was colour blind and wanted RichTextForth, he'd probably have to pay. From what I hear, Chuck's vision is none too good, and he's much more comfortable with displaying ColorForth in big blocky letters in different colours than he would be displaying them in bold, italics, and underline.
Since Forth at the moment is inside the little thingies that you sign for packages on for one of the major US delivery companies, manages the baggage system for some major airports, the European system for letting bank machines talk to each other, and provides the OpenFirmware pre-OS boot manager for Sun, IBM and Apple systems to help bring up new hardware faster, how can you possibly ask where people are using Forth on other machines?
Clearly, the current ANS Forth standard does not include everything needed for a more sociable forth, but work is ongoing.
And sure its got more presence in professional robotics than amateur robotics, but what about the Forth for Mindstorms?
I'm not joking. See the discussion of the latest EuroForth conference in a recent Forthwrite at
... what is impressive if using Forth to put the webserver into a lightswitch for a security system.
http://www.fig-uk.org
It is, in fact, pretty easy to run gforth as a CGI server on a linux system
There are two main costs in executing Python code: evaluation of reasonably simple stack-based byte code and string hashing. Perhaps the byte code could be replaced with forth directly, but there is still a lot of processing that goes to hashing. So, how can we do fast (character string) hashing with the x25 - with lots and lots of different hash tables. The answer is - we cannot do it. There is probably not enough memory bandwidth to support the 25 processors all fetching hash data from the main memory. (Python code is roughly 50% evaluation, 50% hashing.)
-- Imperial units must die --
There is no way that you would want to use all 25 processors all fecthing hash data from the main memory at the same time. You would organise the processors into work crews.
... so what! $1 a chip, it can be efficient for a few to be idling, just to provide low latency.
... if you run into bottlenecks, apply more chips. Forth or a Forth-like language is going to be the assembly language of that kind of cheap chip, because you need operand free operations and seperation of datastacks and return stacks to sidestep the issues that drive you up CISC and RISC design paths.
And, after all, the main point of mass producing Minimal Instruction Set chips interconnected together on the same die is that if you aren't using all the processors at some point in the process
Think of the x25 organised into 5, 5 processor work crews, with one evaluating and the other four doing the work with hashes (on the assumption that the hashing is harder work for the cores than the evaluation). And if there's a memory bottleneck, either in access or quantity, add more x25's with their own 256K memory.
I reckon that's the notion of a cheap chip such as the X25
No worries mate. Just post your code on comp.lang.forth and say, "I can't come up with good names for a lot of these functions, suggestions welcome".
If people are interested in what is accomplished, you'll have plenty of names to use once the smoke clears.
I find the blatent soundbiting in regards to Chucks comments regarding blind programmers to be utterly amazing. People have grabbed hold to one sentence with a pitbull grip and totally ignored the rest of what was said. Here are some statements that were ignored by so many.
Chuck Moore : I'm amazed at how effective blind programmers can be. I rely so strongly upon seeing the code that it's hard to imagine listening to it. Yet I know it can be done.
Also Chuck Moore : But in fact, color is merely a property of words that helps to distinguish them. As is intensity, size, font, volume and tone. I'm sure colorForth will be translated into these other representations. I, myself, will be exploring spoken colorForth. (As soon as I can decipher PC sound cards.)
Someone suggested that Chuck should have "considered blind programmers" when designing colorForth. In truth colorForth in its current form could be more easily adapted to blind use than much of the Windows paradigm. There are bits encoded in the Forth words that change the color to red, green, blue ect. A computer could easily be programmed to simply say "red", "green", "blue" or even "defining", "compiling", "executing".
Perhaps he might not have used the best or most PC choice of words, but the thought is "when experimenting with a tool I'm designing for myself, why should I be restricted by what best works for someone else?" I totally agree. ColorForth is just now being released to the public. Like many other tools that were developed in private and are in the initial phase of release it will take time before it fits needs of this or that particular user. But to focus online on its limitations is to be truly "blind".