[HN Gopher] Masterminds of Programming: Chuck Moore
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Masterminds of Programming: Chuck Moore
Author : chrispsn
Score : 36 points
Date : 2020-01-05 07:51 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oreilly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oreilly.com)
| shrubble wrote:
| In reading this interview I couldn't help but think that what he
| was saying about his parallel computing chips, ended up applying
| to GPU's.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if gpu core arrays can share ~high level code like
| GA144. Passing bits of forth thunks onto neighbors felt
| immensely powerful (and as much more rope to tie yourself into
| knots).
| kick wrote:
| These types of books have always been a bit frustrating to me.
| _Coders at Work_ is another one.
|
| Moore is a genius, and his inclusion is absolutely for the
| better.
|
| However, if it came just 5 years earlier, it would have been able
| to have _so_ much more value. Falkoff 's inclusion within was
| great, Falkoff contributed greatly to the APL ecosystem, but
| interviews with Iverson are scarce and hard to come across, and
| he had an amazing view on the big picture for these things. His
| books are probably the most valuable I have on my shelves.
|
| Also, it leaned far too hard on ALGOL's many derivatives. Roger
| Hui and Arthur Whitney would have been more valuable than most of
| the people included. Even Forth got three people interviewed,
| which is admittedly pretty cool! (PostScript is Forth.)
| yesenadam wrote:
| >PostScript is Forth
|
| Last year I got into Forth, then PostScript, which seems a kind
| of dumbed-down, simplified Forth. On PostScript's wikipedia
| page, Forth is not mentioned as an influence. So I went to
| change that, and _in the page html_ there 's a comment saying
| if you came to add Forth, see talk page. I looked into it a
| bit. (One of?) The guy who wrote PostScript's previous couple
| of languages were based on Forth (wikipedia admits), but then
| PostScript was not so much as influenced by it?! That actually
| made me very angry! The PostScript reference manual reads as if
| written by lawyers, which maybe shed some light on it. They
| don't admit it's influenced by Forth, but say of course it has
| influences, and the next sentence is about Forth. As if they
| couldn't not mention Forth, but legally didn't want to spell
| anything out. Pretty disgusting treatment of Chuck Moore, seems
| to me. HN, help me right the wrong!
| kick wrote:
| It's at times like these where the corporatism of Wikipedia
| editors for any article involving a tech company shines
| through very clearly.
| dewster wrote:
| If you actually look at the way Forth works you'll see that every
| stack manipulation wastes code space and real-time. Since there
| is only one data stack there are a lot of stack manipulations
| going on. Forth programmers are aware of this and do their best
| to minimize them, which tends to make their incredibly cryptic
| code even more cryptic.
|
| If the definition of a low level language is one that bedevils
| the programmer with minutiae, the Forth is the lowest of the low.
| I don't understand the fascination others have for it, and don't
| understand how anyone can like it after actually programming with
| it. It's horrible.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I hear that repeated often.
|
| What about 'Freude am Fahrvergnugen!' in a light sports car,
| vs. some wobbly limo or SUV?
|
| Furthermore: [1]
| http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ForthStack.html
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12237539 [3]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13154111
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(page generated 2020-01-05 23:00 UTC)