Re: Build your own Forth for Microchip PIC: the nature of metacompilation

Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
John Doty wrote:
Elizabeth D Rather wrote:

What you write doesn't show any understanding of my style or experience at all.

Then explain it better.

That's not the topic here.

While you're at it, explain how it is that you believe "many" astronomers still use Forth, when I know it must be very few.

When all else fails you trot out this red herring? If I had any reliable numbers (and there are no reliable numbers for any language used in any field like this that I know of) I'd call them 'many' and you'd call the same number 'few'.

And I'd be right. The number is so close to zero that they are very hard to find. Astronomers using C, C++, Fortran, Java, Python, Perl, Mathematica, Matlab, IDL, and even Visual Basic are much more numerous.


You have never seen me work, you have never seen my code.

I've read your papers. Those don't contain your code?

If you've read them you shouldn't be asking ;-) But code samples in papers on Forth don't necessarily represent project code or one's style when working on projects.

You don't even know anything about my professional background, which includes quite a lot beyond Forth.

I know you repeatedly assert your ignorance of programming beyond Forth. Indeed, I have stated I find this hard to credit. So which is it, willful ignorance or misrepresentation?

I have said that I haven't programmed in C. That's true. But I spent over 10 years programming in Fortran (and some variants), several versions of Algol, COBOL, APL, and about a dozen assembly languages. I've read K&R on C and taken courses in Snobol and Smalltalk. And I've managed several C projects, with some excellent C programmers.

Then you have less programming experience than I have. Substitute Smalltalk's descendant Objective-C and the only one above I haven't *used* is COBOL. I've used a bunch more. And the languages above are all more than 30 years old. Things have changed a lot. You should try Python. Or to really bend your mind, Mathematica.


For the last 15 years or so I've been mostly in company and project management. Projects have been primarily (though not exclusively) in Forth. Most of the programmers who've worked for me have rich and varied backgrounds, and I learn a lot from them, from our customers (who have used a lot of different languages, and many do not use Forth exclusively), and from the students in my courses.

During the period of the ANSI process I and other TC members conducted an intensive study of various Forth implementations and variants.

Yet you didn't "get" STOIC.


If somebody came to you and offered a contract to recast work you'd already done by other means into silicon VLSI hardware (something I guess you've never done), would you reject the offer or start studying?

I'd accept the offer and hire an expert in the field to work with me.

Then you'd probably fail at a project where knowledge of the application is more important than knowledge of the tool.


You can probably guess what I did...

Plunged in like a well-meaning amateur?

Studied. Got advice from experts. Looked at the problem from different angles. Plunged in. Succeeded. State of the art performance for 1/10 the power and 1/100 the mass. Now doing final simulations for the second generation chip. VLSI is taking over my business ;-)


It is your style in this newsgroup to throw out ignorant, misinformed assertions such as those above, unsupported by any facts or evidence.

How many astronomers actually are using Forth these days? You've asserted "many". I know this is major misrepresentation. The last time I checked a sample of thousands, I couldn't find any.

Changing the subject doesn't help.

It's part of your pattern of misrepresentation.

....

Jon Sachs learned a lot from you. And he passed it along, with improvements, to the rest of us at MIT at the time. But you seem to have learned nothing back, although it *was* offered. Three decades later, you're still stuck in the 70's. I can't be, that won't work in my world any more.

As nearly as I can tell from what you write here, your view of Forth is
stuck in the 70's and Sach's reaction to it.

Nah, 80's. Heyday of the LSE dialect. But the difference is I'm not in denial about the decline of Forth. Looking for ideas to recover a tool that's lost for most practical purposes. Lost, but not replaced...

But who's changing the subject now? I repeat, Jon learned a lot from you, but you learned nothing from him, despite the fact that it was offered and there was plenty to learn. Outside your box...

--
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
--
Specialization is for robots.
.

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