ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (01/11/90)
Date: 01-09-90 (09:52) Number: 1642 (Echo) To: GARY-S Refer#: 1619 From: PETE KOZIAR Read: NO Subj: FORTH IN ACADEMIA Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I must throw my two cents in as to why I don't think FORTH is taught in Universities: 1. "C" actually has a lot of roots in other academic languages, even going back as far as ALGOL-60. The control structures, etc. are similar. 2. When I was in school, there was a lot of emphasis on the dead-end of "proof of correctness." (don't get me started on why I think it is a dead-end; here's my summary on the matter: just because a program can be proven to match the spec proves nothing in the real world outside of opsys or compiler development. The vast majority of solving the problem consists of understanding the problem well enough despite the specification) A great deal of the work on "proof of correctness" has been done on the Algol-like family (C, Pascal, Bliss, etc.). 3. Bell Labs basically "gave" Unix away in the early 70's to universities. "C" was there, it was available, and it was similar enough to other structured languages (like Algol) to be easily learnable. I once stopped back in the Hopkins bookstore (my alma mater). Not one book on FORTH. Not one. Think about it. --- * Via Qwikmail 2.01 The Baltimore Sun ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (05/03/90)
Date: 05-01-90 (12:11) Number: 1648 (Echo) To: MARK SMILEY Refer#: 1647 From: ARCHIE WARNOCK Read: NO Subj: TEACHING F-PC Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE MS> Which of the many ways did you suggest? Or did you let them try to MS>figure it out themselves? How much Forth had you taught them at that MS>point? Did they know how to do LOOPs in Forth? I just let them try things. We'd already done @ and ! when I first suggested, and they'd go back to it periodically when I'd point out a particularly dangerous construct. Mostly they tried putting 0 into various memory locations. I had one pair of guys who really liked trying it with the assembler. MS> I'd be particularly interested in any problems you devised for your MS>course. Mostly, I worked from Jack's notes. I was teaching a non-credit course here at Goddard, and so didn't really make assignments, as such. I basically gave my own notes and then had them work on Jack's problems as a lab. MS> I enjoy image processing, too, but what sort of programs could you MS>assign to beginning Forth students along those lines? It's an enormously powerful example of vectored execution. Also defining matrices and images is a good example of using defining words. --- ~ EZ 1.27 ~ Go FORTH and multiply! ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (05/04/90)
Date: 05-02-90 (20:00) Number: 3191 (Echo) To: MICHAEL HAM Refer#: 3171 From: JACK BROWN Read: NO Subj: F-PC TUTORIAL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE >Jack, it wasn't a vote against your continuing; it was a comment on how >the tutorials might better be distributed. Most people would not, I >think, read the messages at the computer while signed on. If they are >going to download the messages for later perusal, it just seemed a >better approach would be to use a compressed file. No suggestion that >you not continue. Sorry if you took my second comment seriously but I just found it amusing that you comment to ZIP the tutorial was followed immediately by a message mentioning your book so couldn't resist making a comment! The problem is with this medium is that you don't always know when someone is making a comment "tounge in cheek". The medium of presenting the tutorials via messages worked quite well when we first started here over a year ago ( or was it 2) with the tutorials in a separate TUTORIAL conference echoed only to Forth-NET. Jerry and I discussed putting them in FORTH which had wider distribution to see if we could get some participation from some of the non Forth Boards. However... I think that they may just disapear off the end of the message que at the end of the week and am now thinking that they might be better posted back to a sort of semi permanent TUTORIAL message base that could be read by new people as the join Forth Net. I would prefer that they appear in a form where interaction is possible and would prefer that the messages stay around for longer than one week. During the last pass with the tutorial we did ZIP up all the messages, tutorials, replies, problem solutions etc and post them in ZIP files for those that wanted to down load them as a bundle. I plan to do that again. Again.... please don't take my comment seriously... Best regards... Jack. NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (05/04/90)
Date: 05-02-90 (20:19) Number: 3193 (Echo) To: IAN GREEN Refer#: 3182 From: JACK BROWN Read: 05-02-90 (21:07) Subj: F-PC TUTORIAL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE >doing so. Do not however stop posting the lessons as those who cannot >download because they are on the net or on a diferent net would loose a >valuable training session. I wanted to try out the FORTH-Metronet conference to see what reaction they would receive from a wider circulation but in retrosepect feel that they would be better placed in a more permanent location. Because of the volume of mail handled by some systems, messages older that a week or so are deleted and the tutorial posted in the FORTH conference would soon just be come a moving window that would not be useful to new people joining the Forth conference. They will be posted in a message base and will also be made available in ZIP format for downloading. NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (05/04/90)
Date: 05-02-90 (20:27) Number: 3194 (Echo) To: CHRIS WATERS Refer#: 3180 From: JACK BROWN Read: NO Subj: F-PC TUTORIAL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE >F-PC is not available here; is this a shareware or PD product? (Yeah, >know, I should have read the tutorial, it probably would have told me. F-PC is public domain and is available from BCFB, (see tag line) and the rest of the Forth-NET boards. The first message gave sources for F-PC which I will repeat if you like. NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (05/04/90)
Date: 05-02-90 (21:07) Number: 3195 (Echo) To: JACK BROWN Refer#: 2831 From: IAN GREEN Read: NO Subj: F-PC TUTORIAL Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE >I wanted to try out the FORTH-Metronet conference to see what reaction >they would receive from a wider circulation but in retrosepect feel tha >they would be better placed in a more permanent location. Because of >the volume of mail handled by some systems, messages older that a week >or so are deleted and the tutorial posted in the FORTH conference would >soon just be come a moving window that would not be useful to new peopl >joining the Forth conference. > >They will be posted in a message base and will also be made available i >ZIP format for downloading. The Metro-Net idea is a good one, but as you suggested, hindsight is usually better than forsight. Perhaps both would be best so that if a reader's interest is aroused then he can aquire the complete set of lessons to study the language. Ian NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (03/30/91)
Category 2, Topic 2 Message 59 Sun Mar 24, 1991 ELLIOTT.C at 14:25 EST Last night I talked with a CS prof. at a local institution of "higher education" (both to remain nameless). Sorry - of a local inst. but at a social occasion. He goes by the market place, not what he might think of as good computational practice, quite shamelessly; he had no idea of the existence of the 8086 signed division problem although he specializes around the Intel series,....... Forth not taught there of course. (Toronto area) ----- This message came from GEnie via willett. You *cannot* reply to the author using e-mail. Please post a follow-up article, or use any instructions the author may have included (USMail addresses, telephone #, etc.). Report problems to: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us _or_ uunet!willett!dwp