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Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

cs.uni.edu

81–90 of 186 posts

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#81
post #9

I want to take a moment to reflect on what a great community HN has. It never ceases to amaze me. The link is from the CS department at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA. It sounds obscure, but that's my hometown. I grew up a couple blocks away from it. I sat in on classes there. I even know the author's family. That's small town Iowa, for ya. I never thought I would see anything related to that on h…

I work in the fast food industry, don't code, and I'm not even particularly interested in tech, but spend hours reading the articles and comments here.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#82

If our technological civilization collapses and we need to recreate it from scratch, Chuck Moore could do significant part of that.

Off topic, but we can't. All the readily available sources of energy have been used. As someone else said, this is literally the last great civilization. Best not screw it up!

That's a note on whether a future civilization without access to our knowledge attempted it, no? I imagine some good physics and engineering texts from now might help a future civilization bootstrap itself technologically, even you have to slowly and painfully jump a few steps that would be easier with readily available oil.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#83
post #9

I want to take a moment to reflect on what a great community HN has. It never ceases to amaze me. The link is from the CS department at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA. It sounds obscure, but that's my hometown. I grew up a couple blocks away from it. I sat in on classes there. I even know the author's family. That's small town Iowa, for ya. I never thought I would see anything related to that on h…

Another (former) Iowan here - fully agree how great it is that so many different places are represented here.

I ran a few meetups while in Iowa, and one of the common themes myself and the other organizers tried to help everyone feel is that these days, location really is less important than ever before.

It may help to know people face to face in the Bay Area or other major metropolitan for some opportunities, but now is the best time ever to find people with technological interests in your neighborhood, even if you’re not in a tech hub.

In fact, all the better if you’re not in a tech hub - you can become a local subject matter expert more easily in a growing community.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#84
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from scratch This is even understating it -- it's not like he used existing software to lay out the chip, and then ran tests using PSPICE to verify the functionality. He wrote his own chip design software and analog simulator, and designed the chip in his own environment, and created the CPU, the GA144: a working 144-core processor designed to run "ArrayForth", a parallel version of Forth that he designed and autho…

I feel like a desire to program in Forth is more the consequence of being a crazy-in-the-good-way programmer, rather than something that aids in becoming that sort of programmer. Moore, from my perspective, decided to bootstrap a computing architecture from as primitive and restrictive of a starting place as he could come up with. Forth makes sense as a language if you imagine yourself as a time-traveller stranded in…

The "stranded time traveler" explanation explains a lot, actually. Including motive.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#85
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR Not really as impressive as it was made out to be.

You're entirely missing the point made by Chuck Moore and by extension probably don't understand why his way of looking at programming and the Forth language in particular are a big deal even this long after their invention. This kind of minimalism and stripping things down to their essence is a powerful tool to allow you to focus on what matters rather than at all those things that don't really matter. If you don't…

And here's why that matters. Below is the complete source of a Forth block editor. This editor is more than sufficient to write an OS with, although of course emacs or vim would be better. That is pretty awesome.

Forth is a language in which it's realistic for each programmer to have his own custom editor. That's even more awesome.

    | RetroForth Block Editor (http://www.retroforth.org)
    | * Released into the public domain *
    |
    | This is the block editor from RetroForth Release 9.2.1
    | It splits the normal 1k block into two smaller 512-byte blocks,
    | the one on the left for code, and the one on the right for
    | documentation/comments. Both are displayed side by side.
    |
    | It makes use of some features specific to RetroForth, so it
    | will not work on an ANS FORTH system without changes. 
   
   
    tib 1024 + constant 
    128 variable: 
      variable: b0
    variable  current-block
   
   
    : there b0 @ ;
    : #-of-blocks  @ ;
   
   
    : new there #-of-blocks 512 * 32 fill 0 current-block ! ; new
   
   
    : (block) @current-block : block 512 * there + ;
    : (line) 32 * (block) + ; 
   
   
    : p 2 current-block -! ;
    : n 2 current-block +! ;
    : d (line) 32 32 fill ;
    : x (block) 512 32 fill ;
    : eb (block) 512 eval ;
    : el (line) 32 eval ;
    : e 16 for 16 r - el next ;
    : s !current-block ;
    : i 0 swap : ia (line) + lnparse rot swap move ;
    : \ 1 s e ;
   
   
    loc:
     : | '| emit ; 
   
   
     : row dup 32 type 32 + ;
     : left# -16 + negate dup @base 

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, small town Iowa is very different from elsewhere in the country. It's not what you would expect on a site focused on tech where most probably hail from coastal urban or suburban enclaves. Of course if you refuse to believe anyone who is white could contribute to diversity of a community, well then I guess you're just racist.

>Again, small town Iowa is very different from elsewhere in the country. It's not what you would expect on a site focused on tech where most probably hail from coastal urban or suburban enclaves. He lives outside of a town of 40k, it's not particularly small. For reference I grew up in a town of 6k- I'm not trying to play small-town olympics here but he's hardly from the boonies. The University of Iowa is there... >O…

I don't think I've ever met anyone from Iowa. Most people on this site are probably from the coasts. So I would consider it an example of diversity.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#87
post #65

I found this video of Chuck speaking in 2011 just awe inspiring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBjuSCX8jE

I really worry for what we'll lose when he dies and no-one carries on his work. Reading about his systems is like peering into an alternate universe of engineers and technicians making the world go 'round.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#88

I used to go to the NASA Forth User Group meetings in the early 90's to hang with compiler and language nerds. Chuck Moore is a genius problem solver. His Starting Forth is one great example of an introductory language text.

Starting Forth by Leo Brodie is an excellent book, considered one of the best programming books ever written.

https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#89

The "Do Not Speculate!" idea reminds me of the practice of delivering "the kitchen sink" when only a small program that does one thing would suffice. It reminds me of when, e.g., a 1990s-2000s Windows user needed a small program that does one thing, and in order to get it, the download from Microsoft was an installer with hundreds of megabytes of unneeded binary files. It was not possible to download only the single…

This is what I like about Rebol & Red...pity Rebol didn't catch on more. The full Rebol download is a single executable (no real install) and can build GUIs, and so much more in a very small amount of code.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#90

I used to go to the NASA Forth User Group meetings in the early 90's to hang with compiler and language nerds. Chuck Moore is a genius problem solver. His Starting Forth is one great example of an introductory language text.

Starting Forth by Leo Brodie is an excellent book, considered one of the best programming books ever written. https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

Sorry I recalled the author wrong. I'll leave your correction. Thanks.
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