That was a great use of Forth in a practical setting. Like the others here, I am starting out in Forth and would like to see more over the shoulder videos like this. Cheers and thank you!
Learning Forth and was trolling the web for an actual program and landed here. An awesome example that I can sort of follow and practice with. Also spied your ham call. Fernando N2FQ/6
Ok 10y old BUT anyone here to learn might also look into create/does> for creating patterns of words. And please don’t use meta-return using rdrop tricks. If you want to do such trickery think of a way to build structure words around it instead of hardcoding in assumptions about how deep you are. Also look into vectored execution (index into a list of code addresses and jump to them). But no shade here either, it’s also good to know how things work. No two people code the same way. Doing this live is impressive in and of itself :)
Please do more videos like this of live coding in FORTH. I love your FORTH coding style. I'd really like to get more examples like this one. Very clean code.
Thanks for the video, it was very nice to watch as I'm currently getting in to Forth in my spare time. A little feedback: 1. I think you should save the copyright / cc talk until the end of the video, since you don't want people to get bored before the video has a chance to actually start. 2. You mentioned how emacs has SLIME for lisp. And well actually gforth actually ships with a gforth mode for emacs (in gforth.el) which at least let's you have a forth REPL in emacs. I've tested that part so far, but I believe it also let's you send code to the repl for reloading etc on the fly but I'm not entirely certain. Anyway thought you might wanna know about it and check it out! I do admire your solution though :D Other than that thanks for the great video, looking forward to the next one!
+BitPuffin Update: I played a little bit further with gforth.el and can confirm that indeed it gives you some of the SLIME-like functionality, like sending a selected region of text to your forth environment or sending the entire file etc. I think it also offers some autocompletion (but I haven't tested it) and possibly also provides some debugging things too but I didn't get that far with it. Just wanted to see if it had the part I think is the most important which is the interactive sending code part! I guess I'll keep you posted about further discoveries, but I recommend you check it out, and maybe you can demo it in your next video :D
Apologies for the late response. Yes, the copyright stuff was over the top and unnecessary. Especially looking back on this video almost a decade later.
Interesting quirk with marker, no need with VIM though. Just run :!gforth % % is current filename. You can also map it for example F2 with :map :!gforth % ^M ^M is Enter, typed as Ctrl+V M
His point is "not having to exit the program/interpreter". The same applies to Emacs Slime (or forth-mode), which has certain benefits as one can imagine.
@@perplexedmoth what is more recommended it? im very beginner for programming in general and im using terminator so I have two terminal windows open in the same path one for the editor in vim and other for the gforth compiler. wil be a better approach development like in the video with go.fs file ?
"Memory management is more explicit in Forth" is an understatement. I like Forth, but it doesn't even come with a heap like C. You need to build one from scratch like everything else in Forth.
@@perplexedmoth Forth uses stack based allocation, so they advance the stack pointer and return the address of it. These variables are like C's automatic allocation, not heap. To build a heap you would allocate a large block and manage it like a linked list.
You have defined two words open; the first opens the source file for reading, and the second opens the output file for writing. Is this intentional? And yes, thanks for the tutorial!
35:25 Hi, kc5tja. I'm still getting my feet wet in Forth, and am quite grateful for the opportunity to learn from a master. I had a question about your ===> definition. Could the tail of it be simplified from ... entity rdrop exit then rdrop ; to ... entity then rdrop ; ? Or am I confused about how Forth works (e.g. a possible return stack effect of then )?
I was programming from a stream-of-consciousness while recording this screencast. In this particular case, I think you're right; you can simplify the code as you suggest. Apologies for late response. I don't check comments often. :)
why didnt I know this video existed? and now that I do know i cant watch it because Im at work and there is no audio on my machine! lol how does one contact kcttja these days?
I don’t think this is very good code. What about text encoding? Just going over bytes won’t help you very much once Unicode is involved. Why the need to manually invent reading in files from scratch again? Why the meta-environment tricks instead of just having two windows open? Just to show what you can do with the completely arbitrary environment?
Why the need to manually invent reading in files from scratch? First it is a Forth tutorial so showing us how. Second the fact he can do this in such a short time with Forth speaks to its strength and flexability. In addition, so many programmers rely on premade libraries few can even do simple things from scratch. It is nice to be able to watch someone roll their own for a change...
Agree with Muskrat7; if you're looking to support the full complexity required by Unicode, you're better off using pre-made libraries. As I stated (perhaps not in these words) in the video, it boils down to an economic decision -- when dealing with plain ASCII, *I* (based on my experiences at that time in my life) could roll my own faster (thus, more cheaply) than I could learn how to deploy/use a pre-made solution. But, if I were in your situation and if I knew I had to support Unicode, this would obviously influence my decision, and I'd weigh the benefits of a pre-made library more heavily. (And, honestly, I don't think the code as-written would be significantly impacted if dealing with UTF-8 encoded Unicode files, if any impact is required at all. It clearly wouldn't work with UTF-16 or any UCS-encoded files though.) Regarding the meta-environment, bluntly, yes. Historically, Forth has always been used interactively on bare hardware (e.g., Forth itself *IS* the operating system), including terminals incapable of showing windows (either because of low resolution or insufficient number of columns, etc.). By defining the ecr word, I give you a glimpse on how to overcome this limitation; you can see how you can more or less build your own "speed of thought" approach to working with software in Forth. If we define an IDE as any tool which enables one to workasymptotically at speed-of-thought, then this is Forth's interpretation of an IDE. In the hands of an expert, I've seen ColorForth work go faster still. Alas, I'm not an expert at ColorForth. Finally, and more pragmatically, it helped to reduce video file size. The resolution of the video capture window wasn't terribly large (only about 1/4 of my desktop's size back then), and if I had two windows, the visual artifacts of switching between them or moving them around would be positively annoying. I know this, because I originally tried it and didn't like it. Remember this was recorded in 2008 on an X-Window System desktop, not on a Macintosh or Windows PC.
Samuel Falvo II Great explanation. I'm coming from C, but lately have been studying Forth a lot since it captures perfectly the ideas that are so close to my heart: minimalism and simplicity. As I'm still using mostly full screen text modes on crt monitors I will definitely use your 'ecr' method -- it's great. Do you have a channel with more of those great tutorials by yourself? I find it hard to find quality video presentations on Forth on youtube. Thank you!
> What about text encoding? ASCII is a text encoding. not every single program needs to be perfectly DRY and be generalized to the broadest possible application. In fact, doing this sort of shit for everything is a great way to waste 99.9% of your time doing mostly nothing.
Of all the FORTH videos on YT, this is the absolute best, hands down. I learned more from this one video than I care to mention. Thank you so much.
I would watch an infinite number of these over-the-shoulder videos. you're an admirably clear speaker
That was terrific!
Love to see more of these tutorials specific to Forth.
That was the best video on Forth that I've ever seen. Well done, Sir!
One of the best Forth videos I've seen. Thank you.
That was absolutely fascinating to watch. Definitely pushed me towards spending some time learning forth
This is a very good approach to teaching Forth. Great video. Thanks
Excellent work ! Thank you Andreas Wagner, and thank you Samuel Falvo !
That was a great use of Forth in a practical setting. Like the others here, I am starting out in Forth and would like to see more over the shoulder videos like this. Cheers and thank you!
Every time I run across this video it costs me an hour cause I can't not watch it! :-) Sam you should do some more of these!
Learning Forth and was trolling the web for an actual program and landed here. An awesome example that I can sort of follow and practice with. Also spied your ham call. Fernando N2FQ/6
Forth masterclass! Mind blowing! I really enjoyed your comparisons to Lisp, just brilliant!
Thanks for the very detailed video. I had used both forth and lit prog back in the 90's. Now getting back to them.
Ok 10y old BUT anyone here to learn might also look into create/does> for creating patterns of words. And please don’t use meta-return using rdrop tricks. If you want to do such trickery think of a way to build structure words around it instead of hardcoding in assumptions about how deep you are. Also look into vectored execution (index into a list of code addresses and jump to them).
But no shade here either, it’s also good to know how things work. No two people code the same way. Doing this live is impressive in and of itself :)
More, please 🙂 I'm loving this.. thank you & happy summer! ☀️🏖️
0133h, 10th July '23
Please do more videos like this of live coding in FORTH. I love your FORTH coding style. I'd really like to get more examples like this one. Very clean code.
Very handy reference for someone just starting to learn forth, thanks
Fantastic video. From beginning to end with a few bouts of troubleshooting. Thanks!
Thanks for the video, it was very nice to watch as I'm currently getting in to Forth in my spare time.
A little feedback:
1. I think you should save the copyright / cc talk until the end of the video, since you don't want people to get bored before the video has a chance to actually start.
2. You mentioned how emacs has SLIME for lisp. And well actually gforth actually ships with a gforth mode for emacs (in gforth.el) which at least let's you have a forth REPL in emacs. I've tested that part so far, but I believe it also let's you send code to the repl for reloading etc on the fly but I'm not entirely certain. Anyway thought you might wanna know about it and check it out! I do admire your solution though :D
Other than that thanks for the great video, looking forward to the next one!
+BitPuffin Update: I played a little bit further with gforth.el and can confirm that indeed it gives you some of the SLIME-like functionality, like sending a selected region of text to your forth environment or sending the entire file etc. I think it also offers some autocompletion (but I haven't tested it) and possibly also provides some debugging things too but I didn't get that far with it. Just wanted to see if it had the part I think is the most important which is the interactive sending code part!
I guess I'll keep you posted about further discoveries, but I recommend you check it out, and maybe you can demo it in your next video :D
Apologies for the late response. Yes, the copyright stuff was over the top and unnecessary. Especially looking back on this video almost a decade later.
Excellent tutorial. Thank you
Really helpful!
Interesting quirk with marker, no need with VIM though. Just run
:!gforth %
% is current filename. You can also map it for example F2 with
:map :!gforth % ^M
^M is Enter, typed as Ctrl+V M
His point is "not having to exit the program/interpreter". The same applies to Emacs Slime (or forth-mode), which has certain benefits as one can imagine.
@@perplexedmoth what is more recommended it? im very beginner for programming in general and im using terminator so I have two terminal windows open in the same path one for the editor in vim and other for the gforth compiler. wil be a better approach development like in the video with go.fs file ?
Brilliant presentation
"Memory management is more explicit in Forth" is an understatement. I like Forth, but it doesn't even come with a heap like C. You need to build one from scratch like everything else in Forth.
There's are the words ALLOCATE/FREE which are equivalent to malloc and free, isn't it so?
@@perplexedmoth Forth uses stack based allocation, so they advance the stack pointer and return the address of it. These variables are like C's automatic allocation, not heap. To build a heap you would allocate a large block and manage it like a linked list.
What Forth are you using??????
You have defined two words open; the first opens the source file for reading, and the second opens the output file for writing. Is this intentional? And yes, thanks for the tutorial!
35:25
Hi, kc5tja. I'm still getting my feet wet in Forth, and am quite grateful for the opportunity to learn from a master. I had a question about your ===> definition. Could the tail of it be simplified from
... entity rdrop exit then rdrop ;
to
... entity then rdrop ;
? Or am I confused about how Forth works (e.g. a possible return stack effect of then )?
I was programming from a stream-of-consciousness while recording this screencast. In this particular case, I think you're right; you can simplify the code as you suggest. Apologies for late response. I don't check comments often. :)
why didnt I know this video existed? and now that I do know i cant watch it because Im at work and there is no audio on my machine! lol
how does one contact kcttja these days?
"But that's ok" *presses enter*
MORE FORTH VIDEOS!
What books should I read to understand this tutorial? Thanks.
Starting FORTH by Leo Brodie is a good start
Bitbucket gone, but gulp, the express way, should have been grunt, the bower way. And this video is way before debconf2014, 14 augustus.
nice
Need to C. Moore :-)
Sounds it's too low.
: ===> over = if drop r> call entity then rdrop ;
I don’t think this is very good code.
What about text encoding? Just going over bytes won’t help you very much once Unicode is involved.
Why the need to manually invent reading in files from scratch again?
Why the meta-environment tricks instead of just having two windows open? Just to show what you can do with the completely arbitrary environment?
Why the need to manually invent reading in files from scratch? First it is a Forth tutorial so showing us how. Second the fact he can do this in such a short time with Forth speaks to its strength and flexability. In addition, so many programmers rely on premade libraries few can even do simple things from scratch. It is nice to be able to watch someone roll their own for a change...
Agree with Muskrat7; if you're looking to support the full complexity required by Unicode, you're better off using pre-made libraries. As I stated (perhaps not in these words) in the video, it boils down to an economic decision -- when dealing with plain ASCII, *I* (based on my experiences at that time in my life) could roll my own faster (thus, more cheaply) than I could learn how to deploy/use a pre-made solution. But, if I were in your situation and if I knew I had to support Unicode, this would obviously influence my decision, and I'd weigh the benefits of a pre-made library more heavily.
(And, honestly, I don't think the code as-written would be significantly impacted if dealing with UTF-8 encoded Unicode files, if any impact is required at all. It clearly wouldn't work with UTF-16 or any UCS-encoded files though.)
Regarding the meta-environment, bluntly, yes. Historically, Forth has always been used interactively on bare hardware (e.g., Forth itself *IS* the operating system), including terminals incapable of showing windows (either because of low resolution or insufficient number of columns, etc.). By defining the ecr word, I give you a glimpse on how to overcome this limitation; you can see how you can more or less build your own "speed of thought" approach to working with software in Forth. If we define an IDE as any tool which enables one to workasymptotically at speed-of-thought, then this is Forth's interpretation of an IDE. In the hands of an expert, I've seen ColorForth work go faster still. Alas, I'm not an expert at ColorForth.
Finally, and more pragmatically, it helped to reduce video file size. The resolution of the video capture window wasn't terribly large (only about 1/4 of my desktop's size back then), and if I had two windows, the visual artifacts of switching between them or moving them around would be positively annoying. I know this, because I originally tried it and didn't like it. Remember this was recorded in 2008 on an X-Window System desktop, not on a Macintosh or Windows PC.
Samuel Falvo II Great explanation. I'm coming from C, but lately have been studying Forth a lot since it captures perfectly the ideas that are so close to my heart: minimalism and simplicity. As I'm still using mostly full screen text modes on crt monitors I will definitely use your 'ecr' method -- it's great.
Do you have a channel with more of those great tutorials by yourself? I find it hard to find quality video presentations on Forth on youtube.
Thank you!
> What about text encoding?
ASCII is a text encoding.
not every single program needs to be perfectly DRY and be generalized to the broadest possible application. In fact, doing this sort of shit for everything is a great way to waste 99.9% of your time doing mostly nothing.
Great listening, wish you had more tutorial videos.
Sunil VU3ZAN