manicwave.com » Languages http://www.manicwave.com/blog surf the wave Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:22:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Rediscovering our past: the joy of Forth http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2007/10/02/rediscovering-our-past-the-joy-of-forth/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2007/10/02/rediscovering-our-past-the-joy-of-forth/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:45:18 +0000 Jeff http://manicwave.com/blog/2007/10/02/rediscovering-our-past-the-joy-of-forth/ “The Rest is Silence” – like a song on a long, apparently elliptical, but regular repeat cycle, this phrase enters my consciousness. Although I was an english major and studied Shakespeare, the quote emanates within me not from Hamlet, but my first run in with Forth.Forth, for those that are members only of the post .asm diaspora, is the creation of Charles Moore. There are a lot of resources on the web laying out the history of Forth and some even prognosticating on the future.For me, Forth emerged during the days of 300 baud modems and BIX. At the time, I had a rabid appetite for computing books. I recall buying Starting Forth and subsequently making a sixty mile roadtrip to purchase Thinking Forth.This was during a time when I read code rabidly – everything from assembler listings to Literate Programming.With my Forth passion growing, I loaded up F83. Kicking out code on my pimped out PC XT 8Mhz (mind you with dual monochrome monitors) I groked Forth pretty quickly. My programming experience with the HP-48S and its use of RPL primed me well for Forth.One of the unique things about Forth (at least until the resurgence in interest in Domain Specific Languages – fueled by Ruby but arguably around for a long time) is the ability to have the source language converge on the problem space. It is a magical place wherein the syntactic sugar of the programming language fades into the background and the language of the domain emerges.The Forth.com homepage says
Many experienced Forth programmers have reported that the language frees them to think in terms of the solution instead of the tool, that it is expressive enough to encourage original, elegant solutions without penalty and without bending over backward. (Some have even said their use of Forth made them better programmers in other languages.)     

In Forth procedures are known as WORDS. In F83, source code is laid out in blocks. Each block is 1024 characters conventionally broken into lines of 64 characters each.It is with this knowledge that we find the source of my brain tickler:

\               The Rest is Silence                   04Apr84map
*************************************************************
*************************************************************
***                                                       ***
***    Please direct all questions, comments, and         ***
***    miscellaneous personal abuse to:                   ***
***                                                       ***
***    Henry Laxen          or    Michael Perry           ***
***    1259 Cornell Avenue        1125 Bancroft Way       ***
***    Berkeley, California       Berkeley, California    ***
***    94706                      94702                   ***
***                                                       ***
*************************************************************
*************************************************************   

\ Load Screen to Bring up Standard System             07Apr84map

  2 LOAD    ( Utilities )
  9 LOAD    ( STRINGS )
 12 LOAD    ( EDITING )
 28 LOAD    ( DUMPING )
 31 LOAD    ( SEEING  )
 43 LOAD    ( SHOWING )
 49 LOAD    ( BUGGING )
 52 LOAD    ( TASKING )                                         

CR .( Standard System Loaded )

With that mystery now resolved, I realize that I miss the days of bare-metal programming. As the arcana of the old is replaced with the arcana of the present we will continue to rediscover the past as we invent the future.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2007/10/02/rediscovering-our-past-the-joy-of-forth/feed/ 0 Java Unit Testing innovation http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/04/28/java-unit-testing-innovation/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/04/28/java-unit-testing-innovation/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2004 12:27:48 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=727 The nicest element of this is the categorization of tests. I have always practiced the seperation of tests into lightweight tests and tests that require deployment for instance. Manually altering hierarchies of TestSuites is a PIA.

It will be nice to see how this evolves.

Cedric is at it again :) This time he has take a pinch of JUnit, a touch of NUnit, mixed them together with his special sauce and out came TestNG. This new testing framework features: JSR 175 Annotations, flexible test configuration, and a powerful execution model (no more TestSuite).

via TestNG: Testing, the Next Generation:

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/04/28/java-unit-testing-innovation/feed/ 0 Spoken Java http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/02/13/spoken-java/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/02/13/spoken-java/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2004 03:11:06 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=719 The folks at Berkeley are working on some “interactive, language-aware programming tools”.

They fall under the project Harmonia

The “Programming by voice” research looks quite interesting. The focus seems to be on dictating code, but it would be equally interesting to blast the code for an upcoming code-review onto your iPod and review with your eyes closed.

For some that may be an improvement.

It also appears that the Harmonia group got a grant from IBM to port their tech to Eclipse

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2004/02/13/spoken-java/feed/ 0 Groovy Markup in Ant http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/12/17/groovy-markup-in-ant/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/12/17/groovy-markup-in-ant/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2003 10:12:13 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=705 Groovy Markup marches on! Blending ant interactions easily into the groovy space allows a more natural (read no XML gymnastics to express imperative intent) expression.

Groovy grows another step. Of which there have been many recently. Good Job.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/12/17/groovy-markup-in-ant/feed/ 0 Groovilicous http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/10/01/groovilicous/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/10/01/groovilicous/#comments Wed, 01 Oct 2003 12:37:16 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=698 James Strachan and crew have mobilized to create YAJBSL (Yet another JVM based scripting language) called Groovy.

It will be interesting to see this evolve. Their aim is create a scripting language that is Java-like but incorporates favorite language features from the dynamically typed language world as well.

I for one applaud the focus on blocks, closures and tuple manipulation. The inclusion of a meta-data facility in groovy will provide for some powerful code.

Their goals include integration with existing java classes which positions Groovy nicely for scripting and unit testing.

Keep an eye on groovy.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/10/01/groovilicous/feed/ 0 Water is all wet http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/27/water-is-all-wet/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/27/water-is-all-wet/#comments Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:51:52 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=683 Water a self-described language for the web that

Water is a language for the web that embodies the three primary functionalities needed for general purpose information manipulation into one unified language:

- Code: Water is a general purpose object oriented programming language that is, at its core, more flexible than Javascript, Visual Basic and Java.

- Data: Water permits the description of persistent structured data on the web via an XML syntax yet having the capability of computing values that may contain self-referencial interconnections.

- Markup: Since Water is a superset of HTML, it inherits all of HTML’s capabilities.

Syntactically it appears as as mixture of XML and plain text. The expression to add 5 and 7 divided by 3 is <code>5.<plus 7/>.<divided_by 3/>

Wow!
Water does appear to have some interesting constructs and its prototyped based class system a la Self is an underutilized programming model.

The promise of Water to mix data, presentation and logic, however convenient comingles distinct responsibilities which will inevitably lead to soup.

Haven't tried it, probably won't . Water looks wet from the start.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/27/water-is-all-wet/feed/ 0 The Hair Shirt http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/11/the-hair-shirt/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/11/the-hair-shirt/#comments Wed, 12 Feb 2003 02:18:23 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=677 via Lambda the Ultimate comes Simon Peyton Jones retrospective on Haskell

Good stuff. Haskell Retrospective

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2003/02/11/the-hair-shirt/feed/ 0 Ruby v Perl v Python http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/ruby-v-perl-v-python/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/ruby-v-perl-v-python/#comments Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:49:28 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=637 via bbum’s rants, code & references comes Michael Tsai’s recent expericence using and comparing Perl, Ruby and Python to solve an admittedly small problem.
The qualities that he ascribes to Ruby are easy to agree with.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/ruby-v-perl-v-python/feed/ 0 Plankalkül – Coding Standards from the 40's http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/plankalkul-coding-standards-from-the-40s/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/plankalkul-coding-standards-from-the-40s/#comments Mon, 02 Dec 2002 10:39:01 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=636 via Lambda the Ultimate comes The “Plankalkül” of Konrad Zuse: A Forerunner of Today’s Programming Languages.

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/12/02/plankalkul-coding-standards-from-the-40s/feed/ 0 Coty points out the release http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/11/16/coty-points-out-the-release/ http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/11/16/coty-points-out-the-release/#comments Sat, 16 Nov 2002 17:00:00 +0000 Jeff http://gcortex.com/?p=631 Coty points out the release of BF an interpreter for BrainF**k. BrainF**k is a small Turing complete langauge with only eight operators. BrainF**k fits nicely into the realm of Esoteric Programming. Warning: you can lose a goodly portion of your free time by clicking through that link! I’ll plead the fifth and no one will be the wiser.
If however you have some time, I suggest checking out some of the following

  • INTERCAL is easily the canonical form of esoteric programming. The COME FROM statement is easily my favorite

  • Malbolge – easily one of the most warped – The author of Malbolge, Ben Olmstead never expected anyone to write a program in Malbolge. Imagine everyone’s surprise when Andrew Cooke used a lisp program to grow a hello world program. Cool

  • BeFunge is a multi-dimensional language in which the IP can move in any of four directions. It also features a unified code/data space to facilitate some interesting hacks

  • Purists dot org contains an encyclopedia of interesting languages

  • Turing Tarpit also contains a guide to esoteric languages

  • Random Programming Languages provides a large list of links

Have fun

Share/Save

]]> http://www.manicwave.com/blog/2002/11/16/coty-points-out-the-release/feed/ 0