Forth - Revision history

imported>Uberfukken at 22:24, 13 March 2019

2019-03-13T22:24:41Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:24, 13 March 2019
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	(Later it was deemed necessary to embed [[JavaScript]] in PDFs, because why fail once when you can fail fail again?)		(Later it was deemed necessary to embed [[JavaScript]] in PDFs, because why fail once when you can fail fail again?)

			{{softwarez}}
	[[Category: Softwarez]]		[[Category: Softwarez]]

imported>Sburke: expanding the PostScript section

2012-10-19T12:17:14Z

expanding the PostScript section

← Older revision	Revision as of 12:17, 19 October 2012
(No difference)

imported>Sburke: expanding the PostScript section

2012-10-19T12:17:14Z

expanding the PostScript section

← Older revision	Revision as of 12:17, 19 October 2012
(No difference)

imported>Sburke: expanding the PostScript section

2012-10-19T12:17:14Z

expanding the PostScript section

← Older revision	Revision as of 12:17, 19 October 2012
(No difference)

imported>Sburke: expanding the PostScript section

2012-10-19T12:17:14Z

expanding the PostScript section

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:17, 19 October 2012
Line 37:		Line 37:

	For reasons known perhaps only to warlocks and whores, the following approach was decided on: a file to be printed should be a ''program'' which, when run— in the printer— will draw the document on the page. But what language should these programs be written in? [[Computer Science III\|Lisp]]? [[Cobol]]? Bitch please. ''FORTH!'' Because if you're trying to debug a program that runs ''only inside a printer'', how much ''worse'' could it be if that program is in Forth? And so Forth's flipper-armed demonspawn was named '''PostScript'''.		For reasons known perhaps only to warlocks and whores, the following approach was decided on: a file to be printed should be a ''program'' which, when run— in the printer— will draw the document on the page. But what language should these programs be written in? [[Computer Science III\|Lisp]]? [[Cobol]]? Bitch please. ''FORTH!'' Because if you're trying to debug a program that runs ''only inside a printer'', how much ''worse'' could it be if that program is in Forth? And so Forth's flipper-armed demonspawn was named '''PostScript'''.

			Here's PostScript code for the Fibonacci function from above, written all pretty-like:

			<pre>
			/fib {
			dup 3 lt

			{
			pop 1
			}

			{
			1 sub dup
			fib exch
			1 sub fib
			add
			}
			ifelse
			} def
			</pre>

			But that's just putting lipstick on a hog. This is really what you have:

			<pre>
			/fib { dup 3 lt { pop 1 } { 1 sub dup fib exch 1 sub fib add } ifelse } def
			</pre>

			If you need a reminder that this is really just Forth, here is the Forth code and the PostScript code, lined up:

			<pre>
			: fib dup 3 < if drop 1 else 1- dup
			/fib { dup 3 lt { pop 1 } { 1 sub dup

			recurse swap 1- recurse + then ;
			fib exch 1 sub fib add } ifelse } def
			</pre>

			If you make some function aliases, you can get even further back to Olde Forthe:

			<pre>
			/; { def } def
			/drop { pop } ;
			/1- { 1 sub } ;
			/swap { exch } ;
			/+ { add } ;</pre>

			...to get you to:

			<pre>/fib { dup 3 lt { drop 1 } { 1- dup fib swap 1- fib + } ifelse } ;</pre>

			...and so, lined up again:

			<pre>
			: fib dup 3 < if drop 1 else 1- dup
			/fib { dup 3 lt { drop 1 } { 1- dup

			recurse swap 1- recurse + then ;
			fib swap 1- fib + } ifelse } ;
			</pre>

			(But really, this only ever comes up if you have time-warped into 1987 and are working for Corel and you discover that you need the Fibonacci sequence to finish the part of Corel Draw v0.0 that craps out the PostScript code for drop shadows. Otherwise stop thinking about stack languages and [[GTFO]].)

			When documents are programs (much less in Forth), you cannot tell what they'll ''do'' until you actually ''run'' them— even “how many pages is it?” can be a mystery. In the years that followed version 1 of PostScript, that issue very slowly came to be considered [[FAIL\|a bit of a bother]], and so the subsequent versions of PostScript restricted and boxed in the language, until finally it was given a [[Delete fucking everything\|makeover]] and became PDF, where many of the same graphics primitives could be used, but no actual programming language was at work.

			(Later it was deemed necessary to embed [[JavaScript]] in PDFs, because why fail once when you can fail fail again?)

	[[Category: Softwarez]]		[[Category: Softwarez]]

imported>Sburke: Creating a stub section on PostScript

2012-10-19T12:04:36Z

Creating a stub section on PostScript

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:04, 19 October 2012
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	Fortunately, this Soviet biological weapons attack on the fledgling American IT industry had only limited success. While it had devastating effects on a handful of victims in the "free" world, most IT workers escaped relatively unscathed.		Fortunately, this Soviet biological weapons attack on the fledgling American IT industry had only limited success. While it had devastating effects on a handful of victims in the "free" world, most IT workers escaped relatively unscathed.

			==PostScript==

			In the fullness of time, when the first massive laser printers were being designed in the 1970s, they were designed to be computers on their own, to give them the artistic brio for expressing the graphic design breakthroughs of [[Ugly\|DESKTOP PUBLISHING]]— swoops and curls and gradients and whirligigs, mathematical illustrations, and a single 250-point lowercase letter "a" filling the whole page, in Optima Bold Italic.

			For reasons known perhaps only to warlocks and whores, the following approach was decided on: a file to be printed should be a ''program'' which, when run— in the printer— will draw the document on the page. But what language should these programs be written in? [[Computer Science III\|Lisp]]? [[Cobol]]? Bitch please. ''FORTH!'' Because if you're trying to debug a program that runs ''only inside a printer'', how much ''worse'' could it be if that program is in Forth? And so Forth's flipper-armed demonspawn was named '''PostScript'''.

	[[Category: Softwarez]]		[[Category: Softwarez]]

imported>Sburke: Adding a heading: "Repercussions"

2012-10-19T11:51:26Z

Adding a heading: "Repercussions"

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:51, 19 October 2012
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	You can be assured that if you take more than a passing interest in Forth, you will never get laid again. You will lose your job, and be unable to get a new one. Eventually, you will be found living in a squat, surrounded by rotting garbage and vermin, writing completely useless Forth code on an 80486-based laptop. You won't be at all concerned, because you will have your basic Forth operating system working, and your Forth motherboard drivers mostly bug free, and your Forth window manager code coming along nicely. You will even have written a rudimentary TCP/IP stack and web browser, so you can post to Forth web forums about how gay everyone else's Forth implementation is.		You can be assured that if you take more than a passing interest in Forth, you will never get laid again. You will lose your job, and be unable to get a new one. Eventually, you will be found living in a squat, surrounded by rotting garbage and vermin, writing completely useless Forth code on an 80486-based laptop. You won't be at all concerned, because you will have your basic Forth operating system working, and your Forth motherboard drivers mostly bug free, and your Forth window manager code coming along nicely. You will even have written a rudimentary TCP/IP stack and web browser, so you can post to Forth web forums about how gay everyone else's Forth implementation is.

	Fortunately, this Soviet biological weapons attack on the fledgling US IT industry had only limited success. While it had devastating effects on a handful of victims in the "free" world, most IT workers escaped relatively unscathed.		==Repercussions==

			Fortunately, this Soviet biological weapons attack on the fledgling American IT industry had only limited success. While it had devastating effects on a handful of victims in the "free" world, most IT workers escaped relatively unscathed.

	[[Category: Softwarez]]		[[Category: Softwarez]]

imported>Sburke: typofix

2012-10-17T16:13:37Z

typofix

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:13, 17 October 2012
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	At any time, there are '''''k n''''' implementations of Forth, where '''''k''''' is a constant greater than 3, and '''''n''''' is the number of currently active Forth programmers. When starting out on a programming project, a programmer invariably turns his or her attention to the language implementation itself, fine-tuning it along the way, and ultimately diving off onto the tangent of writing a whole new implementation, forgetting about the original project.		At any time, there are '''''k n''''' implementations of Forth, where '''''k''''' is a constant greater than 3, and '''''n''''' is the number of currently active Forth programmers. When starting out on a programming project, a programmer invariably turns his or her attention to the language implementation itself, fine-tuning it along the way, and ultimately diving off onto the tangent of writing a whole new implementation, forgetting about the original project.

	To give an example of how mind-damaging Forth can be, compare the following two code excerpts. They are both implementing a recursive ~~Fibbonacci~~ function, with the first implementation in Python and the second one in Forth.		To give an example of how mind-damaging Forth can be, compare the following two code excerpts. They are both implementing a recursive Fibonacci function, with the first implementation in Python and the second one in Forth.

	<pre>		<pre>
	# Implementation of a recursive ~~fibbonacci~~ function in Python		# Implementation of a recursive fibonacci function in Python

	def fib(n):		def fib(n):

imported>Sburke: stylefix: itals

2012-10-17T16:12:22Z

stylefix: itals

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:12, 17 October 2012
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	Forth does indeed have application as a minimalist programming language well suited to resource-limited embedded programming applications. However, it tempts its programmer to take a one-way trip away from [[IRL\|the real world]] into a profoundly autistic, anti-social schizoidal world from which he or she will never return.		Forth does indeed have application as a minimalist programming language well suited to resource-limited embedded programming applications. However, it tempts its programmer to take a one-way trip away from [[IRL\|the real world]] into a profoundly autistic, anti-social schizoidal world from which he or she will never return.

	At any time, there are '''kn''' implementations of Forth, where '''k''' is a constant greater than 3, and '''n''' is the number of currently active Forth programmers. When starting out on a programming project, a programmer invariably turns his or her attention to the language implementation itself, fine-tuning it along the way, and ultimately diving off onto the tangent of writing a whole new implementation, forgetting about the original project.		At any time, there are '''''k n''''' implementations of Forth, where '''''k''''' is a constant greater than 3, and '''''n''''' is the number of currently active Forth programmers. When starting out on a programming project, a programmer invariably turns his or her attention to the language implementation itself, fine-tuning it along the way, and ultimately diving off onto the tangent of writing a whole new implementation, forgetting about the original project.

	To give an example of how mind-damaging Forth can be, compare the following two code excerpts. They are both implementing a recursive Fibbonacci function, with the first implementation in Python and the second one in Forth.		To give an example of how mind-damaging Forth can be, compare the following two code excerpts. They are both implementing a recursive Fibbonacci function, with the first implementation in Python and the second one in Forth.

imported>LunarAnomaly at 12:42, 9 August 2012

2012-08-09T12:42:56Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:42, 9 August 2012
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	{{boring}}		{{boring}}

	[[File:~~forth_programming~~.jpg\|right\|thumb\|188px\|~~In all of its glory~~]] '''Forth''' is a highly potent neurotoxin developed in [[Russia\|the Soviet Union]] during the mid 1960s and injected into the spinal column of US Observatory worker Charles Moore. Under the influence of this highly toxic nerve agent, Moore's brain structure was catastrophically altered, causing him to start uttering meaningless words in reverse.		[[File:actual Forth book.jpg\|right\|thumb\|188px\|[http://www.amazon.com/Forth-Atari-Learning-Ekkehard-Floegel/dp/0936200383 Actual book cover.]]] '''Forth''' is a highly potent neurotoxin developed in [[Russia\|the Soviet Union]] during the mid 1960s and injected into the spinal column of US Observatory worker Charles Moore. Under the influence of this highly toxic nerve agent, Moore's brain structure was catastrophically altered, causing him to start uttering meaningless words in reverse.

	So ingenious was the Russians' biological weapon that Moore's colleagues, and later, much of the global IT community, came to regard the toxin as a programming language and, following Moore's lead, named it Forth.		So ingenious was the Russians' biological weapon that Moore's colleagues, and later, much of the global IT community, came to regard the toxin as a programming language and, following Moore's lead, named it Forth.