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Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

cs.uni.edu

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Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#131

Post by progman »

eadmund wrote: post #85
jacquesm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dom…

> : right# negate 32 + . ;

This is an example of "ugly" Forth code. It's ok here to make the code as short as possible.

In reality I would write (educational) Forth code this way. The texts in parentheses are comments.

  ( compute Hypotenuse sqrt[a²+b²] )
  : hypo       ( a  b   )
    swap       ( b  a   )
    dup *      ( b  a²  )
    swap       ( a² b   )
    dup *      ( a² b²  )
    +          ( a²+b²  )
    sqrt       ( result )
  ;

  ( Application:  1.2 3.4 hypo )

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#132

Post by hdhzy »

spinningarrow wrote: post #126
hdhzy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention Red can cross compile for multiple OSes and the parse dialect that is basically generalized, readable regular expressions. My personal theory why Rebol/Red didn't succeed in the mainstream is steep learning curve, it's hard to discover how to do things if you haven't already done some substantial programming work in it. While built-in help is good you need to know what you're looking for. (Delphi had b…

> didn’t succeed in the mainstream Is that true of Red? I was playing with it the other day and it looked really promising, and I was under the impression that it’s still quite new and hasn’t reached 1.0 (my point is that it might not be at a stage where we can write it off).

> it’s still quite new and hasn’t reached 1.0

According to the main page [0] the project was unveiled 6 years ago. For comparison Rust (a random example) started 7 years ago [1] but compare results for "Rust" and "Red/Rebol" on Algolia [2] (sorry no deep links). It's clear Red is niche.

I'm not writing it off. It's definitely one of most interesting languages and runtimes but it's super hard to capture people's attention nowadays when you don't have support of large companies (Go, Rust, .NET).

[0]: http://www.red-lang.org/search?updated-max=2011-03-29T15:38:...

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)

[2]: https://hn.algolia.com/

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#133

Post by a3n »

swyx wrote: post #108
ham_burgers wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

serious question, if you arent interested in tech, what interests you about the articles and comments?

There's a lot of interesting articles here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22how%20is%20this%20hn%22&sor...

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#134

Post by eggy »

exikyut wrote: post #122
throwaway7645 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kdb (the weird line-noise functional programming language) is similar. The trial version is a 200KB binary.

Isn't Kdb the database you can program in Q now, but also has K the PL too? I program in J, which is similar. I don't consider it line noise, but I get the drift.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#135

Post by astrobe_ »

progman wrote: post #125
astrobe_ wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do not speculate" or YAGNI is really difficult to do past a certain point. You have to vanquish your own FUD one piece at a time. Nobody really does that unless they are really forced to. Ignore the occasional statements in forum threads about how Forth is so powerful. Forth is not powerful. It is ugly, stupid and mean. Because of this, you simplify, simplify and simplify again, up to the project's specs if you can.

> Forth is not powerful. It is ugly, stupid and mean. That's a statement of someone who doesn't understand Forth. Of course, one can write ugly code easily. Any language with raw power (Asm, C, Forth, Ada) needs a disciplined developer to get beautiful and maintainable code. Forth code can be really beautiful if the vocabulary is well thought out. I consider Forth the best choice for tiny iOT devices, Firmware, and o…

I've written a standalone Forth system that could boot from a floppy and recompile itself. I've ported the core interpreter to C so I could use libraries. I've rewritten it using various threading techniques. Up to that point it was just toy systems because i never did something useful with those. Then I rewrote a Forth interpreter than would play really nice with C. That thing right now is around 30k/3KSLOC. This time I wrote various utilities I needed for my job using it. One of them is a log server that runs 24/7 that provides web interface, and I consider making it send emails... So I think I do understand Forth a little bit.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#136

Post by throwaway7645 »

exikyut wrote: post #122
throwaway7645 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kdb (the weird line-noise functional programming language) is similar. The trial version is a 200KB binary.

The author of Kdb is Arthur Whitney. He is another extreme programmer who has had a huge influence on fintech and made boat loads of cash I would presume.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#137

Post by unixhero »

ham_burgers wrote: post #81
wyattk wrote: 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.

Economist here

I do the same. :)

I am addicted to be very honest. I learn so much, it's worth it.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#138

Post by spinningarrow »

hdhzy wrote: post #132
spinningarrow wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> didn’t succeed in the mainstream Is that true of Red? I was playing with it the other day and it looked really promising, and I was under the impression that it’s still quite new and hasn’t reached 1.0 (my point is that it might not be at a stage where we can write it off).

> it’s still quite new and hasn’t reached 1.0 According to the main page [0] the project was unveiled 6 years ago. For comparison Rust (a random example) started 7 years ago [1] but compare results for "Rust" and "Red/Rebol" on Algolia [2] (sorry no deep links). It's clear Red is niche. I'm not writing it off. It's definitely one of most interesting languages and runtimes but it's super hard to capture people's atten…

Hmm, you're right. I didn't realise it was 6 years old!

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#139

Post by protomyth »

dewster wrote: post #102
protomyth wrote: post #24

Forth was always fun for me because it really was fun to build up a dictionary of words that solved your problem. It practically forced coming at the problem from the bottom. I do admit that I liked some aspects of Postscript better than Forth, but both are experiences. Thinking Forth is a pretty good starting point and in general a great programming book http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/

It's called factoring with subroutines, and Forth hasn't cornered the market on anything by calling them words.

No, but Forth provided one of the nicest, most immediate, and interactive environments to explore a problem. Instead of multiple files in a text editor, you build and test your app live and then dump it all to a text file. I have rarely had that experience with any other language except Smalltalk. I understand some Lisp environments act that way, but Forth was available places Lisp and Smalltalk were not.

Re: Chuck Moore, Extreme Programmer

#140

Post by ajro »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #93
derefr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised that the general principle that helps Moore reduce his code size eludes him. Authoring something blinds you to your own style—both to your mistakes, and to your brilliances. It's why prose writers can't be their own editors: you need someone who wasn't in your head during the writing process to actually be able to see what's ended up on the page, rather than just seeing reminders that immerse you ba…

I'm a big Chuck fan, but I get the feeling that he isn't on a short deadline to build some standard business app like 90% of coders where you almost have a template...sure it has lots of code you don't need and to paraphrase Rich Hickey, it isn't simple, but it's really easy (at least in the short run). He's doing things where he is allotted the time to really understand the problem and deliver a minimal solution. Li…

This is quite old and probably been posted here: http://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines....

But this in my opinion explains well both why people are seduced by forth and why forth is not widely used.

EDIT: also gives opinion why Chuck Moore can be successful using forth.

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