Re: [colorforth] Hello - and where to begin: Sourceless Programming

["Jeff Fox" <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>>>  I remember I was once
>>> trying to disassemble the 2005 binary into sources but don't think I
>>> ever completed it. You're welcome to join the project if you wish.
>>>
>>  Please forgive my naivety, but is the 2005 source lost then?
>>
> He he!  I am sorry if I try the patience of anyone here, but it has
> rather tickled me to find that Sourceless does not mean--as I had
> assumed--that the author had absent-mindedly misplaced his source, but
> rather that he programmed it directly in Machine Code.

the "sourceless" era for Chuck was the early nineties where he
used the hex editor tool in ok to add code to the cad system.
"ok" also known as "3/4th" had a gui, a hex editor, a font
editor, a tiled graphic editor, and a decompiler with a
dictionary of names but Chuck was the compiler.  It was like
three fourths of Forth to Chuck in the early nineties
because it had no source code and no compiler.

he wanted to explore the minimal amount of source code and
the minimum is zero.  He implemented ok and cad on the Apple
II(e?), Novix, shboom, 386, p21, and Pentium all without
any source.  later at iTV source was added to generate the
ok and okad systems and Chuck decided he needed a compiler
and source code because he had learned what did and didn't
work with "sourceless programming." this led to adding
colorforth for scripting chip simulations in 1996.

in the second generation colorforth Chuck bootstrapped a new
colorforth outside ok as the os and compiler for okad 2 in
the way of traditional Forth.  And he did at one time lose
some of the source.

a dozen generations of colorforth later (both for the
people using the same colorforth as Chuck, and for the
people who have ported or created new colorforth) there
have had sources for a long time.

But not all sources have been converted to colorforth
yet so the completeness of metacompilation has not been
achieved.  I think developers have wanted to cross the,
"remove old bootstrap editor with all its new enhancements
in colorforth and compile the editor if not everything
in colorforth" stage, before they do another
'official' release.

I really like the new editor features like color change
and expanded types of searches and even new colors
and new color concepts.  My fingers (and a few other
centers of nerve ganglia) have become accustomed to
the quasi-dvorak and I have to turn qwerty into a
white word like Chuck does to use colorforth.  Most
of the time I use the windows wrapper especially if
you count the time of the row of machines running it
as more for hosted than stand-alone.

best wishes



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