Thinking Forth

Leo Brodie

Description

A Language and Philosophy for Solving Problems
http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
Thinking Forth is a book about the philosophy of problem solving and programming style, applied to the unique programming language Forth. Published first in 1984, it could be among the timeless classics of computer books, such as Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month and Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming.
Many software engineering principles discussed here have been rediscovered in eXtreme Programming, including (re)factoring, modularity, bottom-up and incremental design. Here you'll find all of those and more - such as the value of analysis and design - described in Leo Brodie's down-to-earth, humorous style, with illustrations, code examples, practical real life applications, illustrative cartoons, and interviews with Forth's inventor, Charles H. Moore as well as other Forth thinkers.
If you program in Forth, this is a must-read book. If you don't, the fundamental concepts are universal: Thinking Forth is meant for anyone interested in writing software to solve problems. The concepts go beyond Forth, but the simple beauty of Forth throws those concepts into stark relief.
So flip open the book, and read all about the philosophy of Forth, analysis, decomposition, problem solving, style and conventions, factoring, handling data, and minimizing control structures. But be prepared: you may not be able to put it down.
This book has been scanned, OCR'd, typeset in LaTeX, and brought back to print (and your monitor) by a collaborative effort under a Creative Commons license.

Informations

• Publié par: lettier
• Publié le: 09 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• EAN13: 9780976458708
• Licence : En savoir +
  Paternité, pas d'utilisation commerciale, partage des conditions initiales à l'identique
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Leo Brodie

THINKING FORTH

A Language and Philosophy for Solving Problems

Includes interviews with Forth’s inventor, C H A R L E S H. M O O R E , and other Forth thinkers

With illustrations by the author

 c 1984, 1994, and 2004 by Leo Brodie, version 1.0

AttributionNonCommercialShareAlike 2.0 You are free: •to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work •to make derivative works Under the following conditions:

Attribution.You must give the original author credit.

Noncommercial.You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

Share Alike.If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. •For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. •Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. This is a humanreadable summary of the Legal Code (the full license).

You can download the electronic version from http://thinkingforth.sourceforge.net/

ISBN 0976458705

Leo Brodiehas been thinking professionally about software development since 1980, when he joined Forth, Inc. as a technical writer. He has also served as a consultant, author, developer and program manager for companies including IBM, NCR, Digalog Corp., Microsoft, and Real Networks. He is also the owner of Punch & Brodie productions, which occasionally provides puppet characters for corporate videos and company meetings. He is married and the father of three children. He also authoredStarting Forth(PrenticeHall, 1981).

It is impossible to disassociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based, the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind, and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.

—Antoine Lavoisier, 1789

PREFACE EDITION

TO

THE

2004

It is an honor to find myself writing a preface again, twenty years after the orig inal publication ofThinking Forth.It is gratifying to know that the concepts covered here still have validity after so many waves of technology have crested in popularity. These are simply concepts of good programming, discovered and rediscovered by countless working developers over the years, and given a fresh twist by a genius namedChuck Moore. I’ve never claimed to be an expert on comparative language studies. My recent career has centered more on requirements and functional design than on development technologies. But with the honor of writing another preface to this book comes another opportunity to express my opinion. In the course of designing Internet applications I’ve picked up a little of Java and C#. Enough to recognize in them glimmers of the elegance that Chuck has espoused all along, but burdened with baggage. I looked into some of the recent books that describe design patterns, assuming that they would address recurring code designs for realworld phenomenon. Some of the patterns do, like the controller pattern, but too many others, such as the factory pattern, address problems that are created by the programming language itself. In the 1994 Preface, I apologized that my dismissal of objectedoriented programming in the 1984 edition was a little overreaching. What motivated that apology was having worked for a time with an objectoriented flavor of Forth developed byGary FriedlanderI discovered thatfor Digalog Corp. the principles of encapsulation could be applied elegantly to Forth “objects” that derived from classes that each had their own implementation of common methods. The objects “knew” information about themselves, which made code that called them simpler. But these were still just Forth constructs, and the syntax was still Forth. It wasn’t Java written in Forth. There was no need for garbage collection, etc. I won’t apologize now for my apology then, but please know that I didn’t mean to sell out in favor of fullblown object oriented languages.

Preface to the 2004 Edition

v

vi

Some people have noted parallels betweenThinking Forthand Extreme Programming. For example, emphasis on iterative development, incrementally enhancing code that “works,” and not oversolving the problem, and so on. But in my opinion, Extreme Programming seems to miss an important step in the software development lifecycle: the design of the conceptual model. With only one or two developers working on a project, this phase doesn’t need to be formalized because good developers do it intuitively. But in the projects I’ve been working on, involving five or more developers, it’s crucial. I define the conceptual model as the representation of how the software appearsto work. The conceptual model is not just a restatement of the re quirements. It is the result of carefully analyzing the toplevel requirements and creatively addressing them in a design that will make sense to the user. An example is the “shopping basket” construct in a commerce application. The conceptual design forms the basis for a second tier of requirements and drives use cases describing user/system interactions. This second tier of requirements then drives the technical design and implementation, or how the software actu ally works. The conceptual model is designed collaboratively by the program manager, developers, and business owners. What I’ve read about Extreme Programming seems to instead assume that requirements directly drive the implementation. In my career, I’ve grav itated to the position of Program Manager, the champion of the conceptual model. Most software developers I’ve worked with appreciate my attention to defining the conceptual model before committing to a logical and technical de sign. But the irony in comparingThinking Forthwith Extreme Programming is that some developers of the XP stripe (and who of course have never heard of this book) don’t even see the value of a spec! Ah well.

May wisdom, fun, and the greater good shine forth in all your work.

Leo Brodie

Acknowledgments for 2004 Edition Normally, this is where the author thanks those who helped with the book. In this case, it’s the other way around. This entire project was conceived, executed and completed by an inspired group of people with no prompting or significant assistance from me. For that reason, I have asked them to describe their contributions in their own words:

Preface to the 2004 Edition

John R. Hogerhuis:

I contactedLeo Brodieto discuss the conditions under which he would be willing to allow republishingThinking Forth, in electronic format under an open content license. I acquired a copy of 1984 edition, chopped off the binding, and scanned it in. Then I did a proofofconcept and typeset the first chapter of the book in LyX.

It turned out to be a lot more work than I had time to do by myself (I have more ambition than sense sometimes, as my wife will attest), so I solicited help from the Forth community oncomp.lang.forthoutpouring of support,. The based on love for this book, was so tremendous that I discovered—after dividing A up work and setting the ground rules (stick to 1984 version, use L T X for the E typesetting language, and copyrights had to be assigned toLeo Brodie)—that the more I stayed out of the way and avoided being a bottleneck the faster the work came together.

I also OCRed all the pages at some point using Transym OCR tool (others used the same tool in their transcription effort), and did the cleanup/vectorization pass on the images for Chapter Three.

Bernd Paysan:

I set up the infrastructure. I got the project approved by Sourceforge, set up CVS, mailing lists and added developers. The approval despite the non commercial license is due toJacob Moorman, who knew this book (“despite limitations on use, I recommend approval; this is a unique and excellent resource on Forth”). The actual approval was processed byDavid Burley. A As the LT X guru, I created most of the style file, and cleaned up most of the E submissions so that they work with the style file. I cleaned up pictures, restoring halftone and removing raster as necessary. I ∗ A translated nonhanddrawn figures to L T X. E

Andrew Nicholson:

• • • • •

extracted, rotated and converting the scanned images from Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight into PNGs and adding the images into the correct places. A transcribed Chapter Two from OCR to L T X E rebuilt the index from 1984 revised and cleaned up Chapter One and Chapter Five cleaned up Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight

∗ Note fromJohnadd that: I’ll Berndreally took the ball and ran with it, employing the “Free Software” development model to impressive effect. Of course, an important part of most Free Software projects is one dedicated super developer who blazes the trail and gets a large percentage of the work done.Berndis that guy.

Acknowledgments for 2004 Edition

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viii

Nils Holm: Transcription/initial typesetting of Chapter Four, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight

Anton Ertl: A I LT Xified (typeset) and did some cleanup of Chapter Three. E

Joseph Knapka: Transcription of Chapter Three

Josef Gabriel: I transcribed Chapter Six. I see my contribution as helping to pass on Forth to other folks. I hope folks will read“Thinking Forth”and have their code changed.

Ed Beroset: A Typeset the epilog and appendices, and did some of the L T X coding. E

Albert van der Horst: Transcribed/did initial typesetting for Chapter Five

Steve Fisher: Ran the OCR for Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight

To all of the above, I am deeply indebted and honored.

Preface to the 2004 Edition

Leo Brodie Seattle, WA November 2004

PREFACE EDITION

TO

THE

1994

I’m honored that the Forth Interest Group is reprintingThinking Forth.It’s gratifying to know that the book may have value to appreciators and users of Forth. This edition is a reproduction of the original edition, with only minor typographical corrections. A lot has happened in the ten years since the book’s original publication, rendering some of the opinions obsolete, or at best archaic. A “revised, updated edition” would have entrailed a rewrite of many sections, a larger effort than I’m able to make at the time. Off all the opinions in the book, the one that I most regret seeing in print is my criticism of objectoriented programming. Since penning this book, I’ve had the pleasure of writing an application in a version of Forth with sup port for objectoriented programming, developed by Digalog Corp. of Ventura, California. I’m no expert, but it’s clear that the methodology has much to offer. With all this, I believe that many of the ideas inThinking Forthare as valid today as they were back then. CertainlyCharles Moore’s comments remain a telling insight on the philosophy that triggered the development of Forth. I wish to thankMarlin Ouversonfor his excellent job, patiently strug gling against incompatible file formats and OCR errors, to bring this reprint to life.

Preface to the 1994 Edition

ix