commit 2e1b610af98e82d6f0fbe360bdc4615265c165c5
parent 86b2527c940d5905910b331830823499ef4565c8
Author: alex wennerberg <alex@alexwennerberg.com>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2023 21:02:55 -0400
slides
Diffstat:
| A | slides.adl | | | 274 | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
1 file changed, 274 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/slides.adl b/slides.adl
@@ -0,0 +1,274 @@
+SIZE 1b,12
+
+NAME Introduction
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+MODE 0c
+HEAD An Introduction
+HEAD to the Forth
+HEAD Programming Language
+MOVE 02,04
+TEXT Alex Wennerberg
+ Welcome, thanks for coming
+
+NAME About
+FILL 03
+GOTO 04,04
+TEXT This Talk
+MOVE 02,04
+TEXT - Not directly useful
+TEXT - Won't really teach you Forth
+TEXT - Provides a new perspective on computing
+
+
+NAME Quote
+FILL 03
+GOTO 04,04
+TEXT "I've tried to brainstorm a different language.
+TEXT A better language than Forth, and failed
+TEXT completely. Far as I'm concerned, Forth is it.
+TEXT Forth is the computer language, that everyone
+TEXT should be using it. And it is a social tragedy
+TEXT that they aren't."
+TEXT - Chuck Moore (Creator of Forth)
+ This slide is for piquing your interest
+
+NAME Some Code
+FILL 03
+GOTO 04,08
+TEXT ." Hello, World!"
+MOVE 00,04
+TEXT : log2 ?dup not if abort then 32 for
+MOVE 02,00
+TEXT >> ?dup not if 32 i - break then next ;
+ Two example Forth programs.
+ Hello world
+ Log base 2 of an integer. Don't worry about understanding it
+
+NAME Learning Forth
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Concatenative, stack oriented
+MOVE 02,02
+TEXT y = foo(x)
+TEXT z = bar(y)
+TEXT x foo bar
+MOVE 00,02
+TEXT 2 3 + .
+TEXT 2 3 swap - .
+ Applicative programming language: what we are used to
+ Concatenative programming language: Forth
+ "all expressions denote functions, and the juxtaposition of expressions denotes function composition" -- Wikipedia
+ Basically, you put things next to each other, you 'concatenate' them
+
+ "Relies on a stack machine for passing parameters" -> every word is a stack operation
+ Postfix notation. Instead of 2 + 3, we write 2 3 +. Lets break it down
+ 2 -> push to stack
+ 3 -> push to stack
+ + -> consume top two items on the stack, add them, push result to the stack
+ . -> pop top item of the stack, print to console
+
+ swap -> stack operation. These are common in forth.
+ Break for questions
+
+NAME Fahrenheit and words
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Words
+MOVE 02,02
+TEXT : washer wash spin rinse spin ;
+TEXT : rinse fill agitate drain ;
+TEXT 85 32 - 5 * 9 /
+TEXT : f>c 32 - 5 * 9 / ;
+TEXT 85 f>c
+ Let's provide a simple example. Fahrenheit to celsius
+ A word is basically the only programming language construct in forth.
+ Everything is a word (except numeric literals). "+", "swap", etc.
+ We can define our own words.
+ Break for Q's
+
+NAME fizzbuzz and loops
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT fizzbuzz
+MOVE 01,01
+TEXT : fizz ( n -- f )
+TEXT 3 mod not if ." fizz" 1 else 0 then ;
+MOVE 00,01
+TEXT : buzz ( n -- f )
+TEXT 5 mod not if ." buzz" 1 else 0 then ;
+MOVE 00,01
+TEXT : fizzbuzz
+TEXT 1 100 for2 i fizz i buzz or not
+TEXT if i . then nl> next ;
+ More complexity
+ How to solve problems with words
+ What is fizzbuzz
+ Break this down
+ IF -> IS a word! Control structures are not part of the language! Wow!
+ now you can get a job in forth
+
+
+NAME Interpretation Loop
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Interpretation loop
+MOVE 01,01
+TEXT begin word runword again
+MOVE 00,02
+TEXT 1. Read a word from input
+TEXT 2. Is the word in the dictionary?
+TEXT ---> execute, go to 1
+TEXT 3. Is it a number?
+TEXT ---> push number to the stack, go to 1
+TEXT 4. else, print "word not found", go to 1
+ Forth is an OS/Language
+ This is what happens when I boot a forth environment. Language/OS
+ Forth is an interpreted language, basically. It reads text input one at a
+ time via the interpretation loop
+
+NAME Comments
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Implementing comments
+MOVE 02,02
+TEXT : \ begin in< 1+ $21 < until ;
+ One example of forth's "magical" simplicity -> Comments are just a word
+ This is it! Think about how Golang implements comments. About 150 lines of code.
+ Scan -> parse -> tokenize -> Build AST -> compile
+ An attitude towards simplicity
+ Skepticism towards complexity
+ Maybe programming doesn't have to be complex
+ TWO POINTS -- Forth's SIMPLICITY and its ability to build abstractions quickyl
+
+NAME Tiny Forths
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Small Forths
+MOVE 02,02
+TEXT Forth is really, really simple
+TEXT - A 3-instruction forth in 66 bytes
+TEXT - Sectorforth 10 code words, 512kb
+TEXT - UXN -- machine forth in 98 lines of C
+TEXT - Dusk OS 10k LOC 32-bit OS
+MOVE 00,01
+TEXT "Forth has the simplest syntax and therefore the
+TEXT simplest parser, interpreter, and compiler ever
+TEXT used in a "mainstream" general-purpose
+TEXT programming language."
+ Is not just its simplicity, but its ability to build abstractions
+
+NAME Abstraction
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT Abstraction
+MOVE 02,02
+TEXT - Build abstractions quickly
+TEXT - Don't hide from 'lower' layers
+TEXT : :c cctok$ nextt cparse ;
+TEXT S" //" s= of drop begin ( )
+TEXT ccin dup not if ( EOF! ) rdrop exit then
+TEXT ?line+ LF = until
+TEXT nextt? endof
+MOVE 00,01
+TEXT dusk C -> 1.4k LOC
+TEXT tcc -> 30k LOC
+
+NAME Idiolect
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT "Forth is the coinage of words. Each Forth
+TEXT program thereby breaks loose from the continuum of
+TEXT the history of Forth. In consequence, however, a
+TEXT growing Forth program would tend to absorb its own
+TEXT dictionary of primitives into its expanding store
+TEXT of neologisms, until the system itself would
+TEXT barely resemble any other so constructed. It is as
+TEXT if all "human natural languages" were to be
+TEXT absorbed into their speakers' idiolect"
+
+Points here:
+- Forth is non-standard
+- Every forth is different
+- Software companies as large institutions that want the same standards
+- Forth hasn't succeeded for this reason
+- Forth requires rethinking how we work, and how
+ we work together.
+
+
+NAME Endless Abstraction
+FILL 03
+GOTO 02,02
+TEXT "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization"
+TEXT Jonathan Blow
+MOVE 00,02
+TEXT - Building towers of abstraction
+TEXT - Losing foundational knowledge
+TEXT - Unsustainable levels of complexity
+ As engineers, we love abstractions, we love
+ making it so we "don't have to" think about
+ underling systems. There is a danger here.
+
+NAME Conclusion -- Felix Winkelmann
+FILL 03
+GOTO 01,01
+TEXT "[Forth] is not a language for writing meaningless
+TEXT abstractions on top of other meaningless
+TEXT abstractions, or for writing a library that solves
+TEXT a specific problem in the most possible general
+TEXT way, using that fancy algorithm or data format
+TEXT that happens to be hip today. [...] It requires
+TEXT out-of-the-box thinking and a lot of thought, but
+TEXT rewards you with something that stands a better
+TEXT chance of not being just another pile of code that
+TEXT barely works, quickly rots, or ends up being a
+TEXT liability that you regret having ever written and
+TEXT that has grown to a point where rewriting or
+
+NAME ctd
+FILL 03
+GOTO 01,01
+TEXT replacing it becomes harder and harder.
+TEXT Writing "good" Forth code is very hard, [...] it
+TEXT requires an additional effort to simplify your
+TEXT code to a point where everything becomes obvious.
+TEXT This is an art, it is a moment of transcendence,
+TEXT which I don't claim to have ever reached, but
+TEXT sometimes I get a glimpse of it, an inkling of the
+TEXT fact that if I would work very hard on this, it
+TEXT will become so simple, so heavily factored, using
+TEXT such obvious and clear names that everything just
+TEXT falls into place. It is this moment that
+TEXT programmers experience every once in a while,
+
+NAME ctd2
+FILL 03
+GOTO 01,01
+TEXT where a short, simple piece of code just does what
+TEXT it is supposed to do, without any extra baggage,
+TEXT easily understandable. To achieve it in Forth is
+TEXT much harder, it may require more time, many
+TEXT rewrites, but the results are even more
+TEXT satisfying, as the result is smaller, much
+TEXT simpler, fully self-contained and not burdened by
+TEXT code that you can not trust. When you forget about
+TEXT that urge of productivity, which has become the
+TEXT moloch we sacrifice our children to, you may be
+TEXT able to achieve that particular thing that is
+TEXT called quality, elegance, art. It may take a
+
+NAME ctd3
+FILL 03
+GOTO 01,01
+TEXT lifetime, you may never reach that far, but still
+TEXT you should strive for it. Or you remain a
+TEXT cog in the machine, developing on absurdly
+TEXT convoluted "software stacks", using inadequate and
+TEXT brittle languages, connect barely matching
+TEXT interfaces to only small parts of too many bloated
+TEXT libraries, using insanely sophisticated tools of
+TEXT incomprehensble complexity and trot on, asking
+TEXT yourself why everything sucks and why the last
+TEXT time you actually enjoyed programming and were you
+TEXT could be genuinely and deservedly proud on what
+TEXT you accomplished, was when you were a kid...
