Lambda (was: Refactoring in Tunes)

[Massimo Dentico]

Laurent Martelli wrote:
> 
> Every one is also free to use OIL :-) (http://perso.cybercable.fr/martelli/oip/).
> But be warned that it is not (yet) fast. But it's undoubtly tiny, and
> I hope it's consistant and understandable.
> 
> --
> Laurent Martelli
> martelli@iie.cnam.fr

A tipical Forth implementation is about  few kilobytes in size and
usually the core is so little that you can *manually* assemble it.
A single person  can understand  the *complete*  environment, that
traditionally it's composed by  interpreter,  compiler, assembler,
editor, debugger and so on, without any necessity of an OS (itself
has some features usually associated to an OS), moreover is  quite
fast. However some current implementations are based on an host OS
and are big respect to the standalone versions.

Surely OIL is not  so big compared  to other interpreters  but you
need a C++ compiler  to bootstrap it and an host OS to run it  (as
the vast majority of the existing interpreters and compilers).

Another excerpt from "Thoughtful Programming"
- http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm

==================================================================
- http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm#user

Chuck's view  of programming,  as I understand his  description of
it, is that there is a problem,  a programmer  and his abstraction
and the computer.  Forth was there to let the picture be as simple
as possible and let the programmer map the solution to the problem
to the computer. 

Problem 
--- 
Programmer with abstraction of problem 
--- 
Computer 

 and this leading to a solution that looks like this. 

User 
--- 
Programmer's simple  implementation by abstraction  of the problem to the computer 
--- 
Computer 

This was  Chuck's original  idea of Forth  even though  in the old
days the normal picture  was not as complex and layered  as it has
become today.  There were only a few layers between the programmer
and the computer in those days but that was the problem that Forth
was suppose to avoid.  As the layers have become more numerous and
deeper  it has become even more important  to let Forth avoid that
problem.

[...]

Chuck wants to make the computer simple and easily comprehended so
that no extra layers of abstraction are needed to get at it or the
problem.  Chuck wants to make the solution simple so that  it easy
to write  and efficient  and has  no extra layers of unneeded fat.
Chuck  seeks a simple efficient abstraction  of the actual problem
to the actual computer.

[...]

- http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm#fig2

The people coming into computing  in these times  are being taught
that  the picture  below  is  reality  of  a computer.  They  face
enormous problems as a result. Almost no one gets to deal with the
simple reality of the problem  or the computer but must deal  with
the complexity  of a thousand  other people's  abstractions at all
times.

Problem 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of problem(s) 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions in software (example: OO w/ late binding) 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of software reuse (general source libraries) 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of optimizing compilers knowing more than they 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of the computer GUI API 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of the computer OS Services 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of the computer BIOS 
--- 
Programmers's abstractions of the computer architecture ('C') 
--- 
Computer (too complex for all but a few humans to grasp) 

These are two very different  points of view.  Chuck has said that
he would like to Dispel the User Illusion.  He means that the user
has  the illusion  that  all these layers  of abstraction  ARE the
computer.  If they could  see beyond the illusion  to see only the
simple  problem  and were only faced  with mapping it  to a simple
computer things stay simple and simple methods work.  The majority
of problems are avoided this way.

[...]

Chuck  originally created  Forth to avoid  problems  introduced by
unneeded  abstractions.  There  was the  abstraction  of  a  Forth
virtual machine  and the expression of a solution in terms of that
abstraction.  Chuck has spent years simplifying and  improving the
virtual machine  and has moved  that abstraction  into hardware to
simplify  both hardware  and  software design.   He has a  simpler
virtual machine  model,  implemented in hardware  on his machines,
and a simple Forth environment implemented on top of it.
==================================================================

-- 
Massimo Dentico