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Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

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Re: Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

#52

Post by vdupras »

senkora wrote: post #41
nostrademons wrote: post #12

I wonder sometimes if there's an earlier level of technology that society could basically "checkpoint" at and freeze, and then build off of. Capitalism today feels like it's hit the Red Queen Paradox - it goes around and around to keep the money flowing, but with very little actual progress. Indeed, most people seem to feel like the world is getting worse for all that work, and that many of the innovations of the las…

You may be interested in Dusk OS, the 32 bit Forth based operating system for the first stage of civilizational collapse: https://duskos.org/

Thanks for the mention. The philosophy behind Dusk is also eerily relevant to Chuck's problem at the moment. To quote my own manifest[1]:

  When you operate a system, there is no problem that can arise that will make you powerless. Sure, you can have a hardware failure that hopelessly breaks your system, but at least you'll be able to identify that failure and know for sure that there is no software solution or workaround. That's control.
In this situation, of course Windows is to blame. But it could also happen with Linux, even if it's to a much much lesser degree.

If an update breaks your software in a way that is obscure enough to break only your software, then nobody else will fix your problem, and the system as a whole is too complex for you to dive in, making you powerless.

[1]: https://duskos.org/who.html

Re: Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

#53

Post by antonvs »

pmcjones wrote: post #37
anadem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally! At 87 that's gutsy! My very first paid programming work was in Forth on a 6502 platform in the '60s, building a networked accounting and flow management program for a water company, but I'm now 81 and very glad to be retired.

Was your work on the 6502 perhaps in the 70s?

This was after and before the work on the time travel chip

Re: Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

#55

Post by ninalanyon »

mbac32768 wrote: post #48
7thaccount wrote: post #7

It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.

if he's not going to maintain it anymore can't he at least open source it?

It's public domain, sort of.

" Updated 2002 September Philosophy

My attitude about software is that it expresses ideas that cannot be owned. Attempting to assert ownership is undesirable and impossible.

So, although colorForth is infinitely valuable, I place it in the Public Domain to make it freely available to anyone for any purpose. There is plenty of money to be made by porting code, programming applications and teaching.

I am having a fine time using colorForth. I won't spend much time promoting it. This site is my attempt to gauge the market. I will rigidly control the version I use."

But when you go to the downloads you see this:

"Download You can download colorForth thanks to UltraTechnology.

Downloads are still available. But note that COLOR.COM can only run under DOS - not Windows. As you can see above, it's 9 years old and I no longer know how to run it. The current version is available at GreenArrays

    COLOR.COM Jul31
    boot.asm, floppy source
    gen.asm, generic graphics source
    color.asm, kernel source
This is the exact version I'm using, limited only in the amount of source code provided. It's a 63KB .COM program. You're welcome to use it as you please. But it's a powerful tool, so please be careful."

See https://colorforth.github.io/

Re: Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

#58

Post by hulitu »

bitwize wrote: post #16
delish wrote: post #3

Posting a quick TL;DW. A minute into the video Chuck Moore says that Windows updates (on 11 and 10) have caused colorForth to crash, with Chuck thinking it's a graphical problem. I may comment more, but I wanted to post this because I don't see it mentioned as a youtube comment.

Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls? If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!

> If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and

The Wayland idea looks very similar to a Microsoft brain extract: "trust us, it will be the best when it is ready", "your program doesn't work ? update to latest version", "we have updates: we disabled some things which worked before".

Re: Chuck Moore: Colorforth has stopped working [video]

#59

Post by bitwize »

hulitu wrote: post #58
bitwize wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls? If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!

> If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and The Wayland idea looks very similar to a Microsoft brain extract: "trust us, it will be the best when it is ready", "your program doesn't work ? update to latest version", "we have updates: we disabled some things which worked before".

The whole GNOME/FD.o complex has been like that for decades. GNOME's founding document is called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck". Its whole thesis is: Unix style system integration is old and busted; the new hotness is Windows style system integration.

But for decades, Microsoft has been willing to support and work on the ancient tech that got it where it is today. The GNOME/FD.o paradigm is like Mao's continuous revolution. Out with the old and in with the new, forever and always, on an ongoing basis. Microsoft is now changing to this model. I suspect it's for similar pragmatic reasons: it's difficult to recruit young and relatively inexperienced programmers if you're just going to put them to work fixing up code bases from the 90s (written in—brotha, eugh!—C and C++). Since we can't get anybody to maintain that old code, it will become a liability in the future, so we're better off throwing it out and telling our users to cope.

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