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The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

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Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#3

Post by macintux »

Reminds me a bit of Bruce Tate’s approach in 7 languages in 7 weeks, which is where I first encountered Erlang.

I think from a historical perspective, describing COBOL and Fortran as part of the ALGOL family is a stretch, but I suppose it’s a good reminder that all history is reductive.

Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#5

Post by anthk »

- Algol 68 docs: https://algol68-lang.org/resources 'a68g' it's a free as in freedom compiler.

- Forth: you can use PFE,Gforth for ANS Forth requeriments. Or EForth if you reached high skills levels where the missing stuff can be just reimplemented.

EForth under Muxleq: https://github.com/howerj/muxleq I can provide a working config where a 90% of it would be valid across SF.

Starting Forth, ANS version: https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

Thinking Forth, do this after finishing SF: https://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/

Also, Forth Scientific Library. You can make it working with both GForth and PFE, just read the docs.

Full pack: https://www.taygeta.com/fsl/library/Library.tgz

Helping Forth code for GForth/PFE. If you put it under scilib/fs-util.fs, load it with:

    s" scilib/fsu-util.fs" included
https://www.taygeta.com/fsl/library/fsl-util.fs

- Lisp. s9fes, it will compile under any nix/Mac/BSD out there, even with MinC.

S9fes: http://www.t3x.org/s9fes/

Pick the bleeding edge version, it will compile just fine.

For Windows users: MinC, install both EXE under Windows. First, mincexe, then buildtools*exe: https://minc.commandlinerevolution.nl/english/home.html

Then get 7zip to decompress the s9fes TGZ file, cd to that directory, and run 'make'.

Run ./s9 to get the prompt, or ./s9 file.scm where file.scm it's the source code.

In order to learn Scheme, there's are two newbie recommended books before "SICP".

Pick any, CACS, SS, it doesn't matter, both will guide you before SICP, the 'big' book on Scheme:

Simply Scheme https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/pdf/

Simply.scm file, select from ';;; simply.scm version 3.13 (8/11/98)' to '(strings-are-numbers #t)' and save it as simply.scm

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ssch27/appendix-simply....

Concrete Abstractions

Book:

https://www.d.umn.edu/~tcolburn/cs1581/ConcreteAbstractions....

The SCM files needed to be (load "foo.scm") ed in the code in order to do the exercises:

https://github.com/freezoo/scheme-concabs

If you are en Emacs user, just read the Elisp intro, it will work for a different Lisp family but with similar design.

Spot the differences:

Scheme (like s9):

    (define (square x)
     (* x x))
We try:

    >(square 20) 
    400
Elisp/Common Lisp (as the web site shows):

    (defun square (x)
     (* x x))
Same there:

     >(square 20)
     400
- Ok, ML like languages:

https://www.t3x.org/mlite/index.html

If you follow the instructions on compiling s9, mlite it's similar with MinC for Windows. If you are a Unix/Linux/Mac user, you already know how to do that.

You got the whole docs in the TGZ file, and the web.

Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#6

Post by gottheUIblues »

macintux wrote: post #3

Reminds me a bit of Bruce Tate’s approach in 7 languages in 7 weeks, which is where I first encountered Erlang. I think from a historical perspective, describing COBOL and Fortran as part of the ALGOL family is a stretch, but I suppose it’s a good reminder that all history is reductive.

Rather COBOL is a living fossil? And today's Fortran is the FORTRAN family with horizontal gene transfer from the Algol lineage of programming languages.

Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#7

Post by tmtvl »

anthk wrote: post #5

- Algol 68 docs: https://algol68-lang.org/resources 'a68g' it's a free as in freedom compiler. - Forth: you can use PFE,Gforth for ANS Forth requeriments. Or EForth if you reached high skills levels where the missing stuff can be just reimplemented . EForth under Muxleq: https://github.com/howerj/muxleq I can provide a working config where a 90% of it would be valid across SF. Starting Forth, ANS version: https://www…

For Lisp one could also start with Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/book.pdf>) and follow it with SBCL.

Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#8

Post by shevy-java »

gottheUIblues wrote: post #6
macintux wrote: post #3

Reminds me a bit of Bruce Tate’s approach in 7 languages in 7 weeks, which is where I first encountered Erlang. I think from a historical perspective, describing COBOL and Fortran as part of the ALGOL family is a stretch, but I suppose it’s a good reminder that all history is reductive.

Rather COBOL is a living fossil? And today's Fortran is the FORTRAN family with horizontal gene transfer from the Algol lineage of programming languages.

Can COBOL be called a living fossil?

I mean, programming languages do not live; and they do not "die", per se, either. Just the usage may go down towards 0.

COBOL would then be close to extinction. I think it only has a few niche places in the USA and perhaps a very few more areas, but I don't think it will survive for many more decades to come, whereas I think C or python will be around in, say, three decades still.

> family with horizontal gene transfer

Well, you refer here to biology; viruses are the most famous for horizontal gene transfer, transposons and plasmids too. But I don't think these terms apply to software that well. Code does not magically "transfer" and work, often you have to adjust to a particular architecture - that was one key reason why C became so dynamic. In biology you basically just have DNA, if we ignore RNA viruses (but they all need a cell for their own propagation) 4 states per slot in dsDNA (A, T, C, G; here I exclude RNA, but RNA is in many ways just like DNA, see reverse transcriptase, also found in viruses). So you don't have to translate much at all; some organisms use different codons (mitochondrial DNA has a few different codon tables) but by and large what works in organism A, works in organism B too, if you just look to, say, wish to create a protein. That's why "genetic engineering" is so simple, in principle: it just works if you put genes into different organisms (again, some details may be different but e. g. UUU would could for phenylalanine in most organisms; UUU is the mRNA variant of course, in dsDNA it would be TTT). Also, there is little to no "planning" when horizontal gene transfer happens, whereas porting requires thinking by a human. I don't feel that analogy works well at all.

Re: The seven programming ur-languages (2022)

#9

Post by anthk »

tmtvl wrote: post #7
anthk wrote: post #5

- Algol 68 docs: https://algol68-lang.org/resources 'a68g' it's a free as in freedom compiler. - Forth: you can use PFE,Gforth for ANS Forth requeriments. Or EForth if you reached high skills levels where the missing stuff can be just reimplemented . EForth under Muxleq: https://github.com/howerj/muxleq I can provide a working config where a 90% of it would be valid across SF. Starting Forth, ANS version: https://www…

For Lisp one could also start with Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation ( https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/book.pdf >) and follow it with SBCL.

Yep, and after that I'd jump into PAIP, Paradigms of AI Programming.

Code: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp

The EPUB looks broken in my machine, try the PDF: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Norvig._Paradi...

Altough Scheme and CL are different paths. CL's loop it's really, really complex and Scheme it's pretty much straightforward to understand. Any advanced CL user will have to implement Scheme's syntax (and an interpreter) as an exercise for PAIP. CL in CL... well, CL is too huge, T3X tried with Kilo Lisp 23 http://t3x.org/klisp/22/index.html and I doubt if anyone can even complete anything but the few starting chapters from Intro to Common Lisp with it.

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