home .. forth .. colorforth mail list archive ..

Re: [colorforth] Ideas


--- Mark Slicker <maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Samuel A. Falvo II wrote:
> >
> > 2) If you don't aspire to learn, then you don't
> aspire at all!  Life is
> > all about learning.  Your whole ColorForth
> projects have been nothing
> > *but* learning experiences for you.  Why
> artificially restrict yourself
> > to JUST ColorForth?  As Mark Slicker said in
> another post, ColorForth
> > did **NOT** just happen overnight.  Its evolution
> started from the
> > *very* *beginnings* of Forth back in the 60s.  He
> had to learn some
> > aspects of other programming languages to be able
> to find and refine
> > certain ideas and concepts in Forth (e.g.,
> ColorForth's and
> > MachineForth's preferred looping constructs were
> borne out of work by
> > Chuck to find out what was wrong with other
> language control structures
> > in Forth, such as DO/LOOP [Fortran], FOR/NEXT
> [Basic],
> > BEGIN/WHILE/REPEAT [C, Pascal, and other
> Algol-derived languages]).  He
> > had to learn how operating systems were structured
> internally to
> > decipher obtuse device driver code to
> reverse-engineer some things to
> > get ColorForth working (this is documented in a
> few of Chuck's videos on
> > Ultra Technology).  Chuck admits himself that Lisp
> had a *huge*
> > influence on Forth!  The list goes on.
> 
> If my history is correct, none of the artifacts you
> had listed previously
> had a signifigant influence on Chuck Moore's Forth.

I don't think your history is correct.  Or perhaps
I misunderstand your use of the term "significant
influence".  Certainly the constructs that Samuel
listed (DO/LOOP, FOR/NEXT, BEGIN/WHILE/REPEAT)
were in other languages before they were in some
incarnation of Forth.  I believe that DO/LOOP
was in a Forth Chuck Moore wrote (or worked on).
I know for a fact that FOR/NEXT is.  (It's in
ColorForth afterall, and it was first seen in
cmForth if MY history was correct).
 
Regards,

John M. Drake

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: colorforth-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: colorforth-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Main web page - http://www.colorforth.com