Never used the language, so it took me a minute, but I got it. (Maybe helps that I’ve been trying to teach myself Latin, where the verb often comes last? “Ego Forthum amo”)
dschultzsays
Once upon a time I took an engineering graduate course that required programming. Random variables and noise. The professor stated that he didn’t care what language we used, so I used Forth. This worked very well.
At one point I had occasion to visit him in his office and I noticed that he had a list of programming languages posted. With comments for each. I forget what it said about Forth but I assume that for BASIC it had the usual causes dain bramage.
Got it. Back in college (1970s) I had friends who had RPN calculators. Not my favorite.
AstroLadsays
Never used it. I looked at it multiple times, but I never had a system so resource limited that it made sense. Then there would have been the trouble to find 6-8 programmers who either knew it, or could learn it quickly. FORTH is perhaps not quite as bad as APL for being write-only, but it tries. Pascal programmers were easy to find at the time (before C took over). That’s what we used, so there was no pressure to switch.
When we finally did switch, it was to an early C++, the antithesis of FORTH. That was an attempt to make Windows 3.1 easier to deal with. Yeah, right.
AstroLadsays
@6: I much prefer RPN calculators but not RPN “compilers”.
I bought an HP-35 ~1973 after a late session doing astrophysics problems with a slide rule and getting different answers each time. I paid $495 for it at the university bookstore the next day, but got $100 rebate from HP a few months later. It still worked when I turned it on a few years ago. The only problem, aside from VERY dead batteries, is that the LEDs are only visible at midnight, on a moonless night, at the bottom of a coal mine, with your head in several layers of burlap bags. Even then you have to squint hard.
Robbosays
@8 I have an HP11C that my dad bought me for college in 1985. It’s right at my desk now. I don’t use it too much because some of the keys are intermittent and mess up calculations.
I also have his HP35 that he got in the early 70s. You are correct about the LEDs!
Remember some “learning friendly” language I was supposed to work in for an online course. It was weird, since it expected you to copy-paste images into the code. Just give me straight text so I don’t have to learn a new method of typing.
stevewatsonsays
@9: Ah yes, ye olde RPN vs. algebraic wars, which roughly corresponded to HP vs. Texas Instruments. Since I was given a TI for Christmas in my last year of high school (and so was my then-GF-now-spouse), that’s the side of the argument I wound up on.
Weirdly, I’ve now got calculator apps that seem to be neither.
@8: One of my prized keepsakes is the slide rule that got me through high school in the 1970s, which is the one that got my father through grammar school and university in the 1930s. I was pretty damn good with it at the time. Universities were allowing calculators by the time I got there, but I took it with me to all exams, in case the battery died.
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Never used the language, so it took me a minute, but I got it. (Maybe helps that I’ve been trying to teach myself Latin, where the verb often comes last? “Ego Forthum amo”)
Once upon a time I took an engineering graduate course that required programming. Random variables and noise. The professor stated that he didn’t care what language we used, so I used Forth. This worked very well.
At one point I had occasion to visit him in his office and I noticed that he had a list of programming languages posted. With comments for each. I forget what it said about Forth but I assume that for BASIC it had the usual causes dain bramage.
Got it. Back in college (1970s) I had friends who had RPN calculators. Not my favorite.
Never used it. I looked at it multiple times, but I never had a system so resource limited that it made sense. Then there would have been the trouble to find 6-8 programmers who either knew it, or could learn it quickly. FORTH is perhaps not quite as bad as APL for being write-only, but it tries. Pascal programmers were easy to find at the time (before C took over). That’s what we used, so there was no pressure to switch.
When we finally did switch, it was to an early C++, the antithesis of FORTH. That was an attempt to make Windows 3.1 easier to deal with. Yeah, right.
@6: I much prefer RPN calculators but not RPN “compilers”.
I bought an HP-35 ~1973 after a late session doing astrophysics problems with a slide rule and getting different answers each time. I paid $495 for it at the university bookstore the next day, but got $100 rebate from HP a few months later. It still worked when I turned it on a few years ago. The only problem, aside from VERY dead batteries, is that the LEDs are only visible at midnight, on a moonless night, at the bottom of a coal mine, with your head in several layers of burlap bags. Even then you have to squint hard.
@8 I have an HP11C that my dad bought me for college in 1985. It’s right at my desk now. I don’t use it too much because some of the keys are intermittent and mess up calculations.
I also have his HP35 that he got in the early 70s. You are correct about the LEDs!
also, RPN is the only way to go.
I Polish Notation <3? Is that how it would go?
Remember some “learning friendly” language I was supposed to work in for an online course. It was weird, since it expected you to copy-paste images into the code. Just give me straight text so I don’t have to learn a new method of typing.
@9: Ah yes, ye olde RPN vs. algebraic wars, which roughly corresponded to HP vs. Texas Instruments. Since I was given a TI for Christmas in my last year of high school (and so was my then-GF-now-spouse), that’s the side of the argument I wound up on.
Weirdly, I’ve now got calculator apps that seem to be neither.
@8: One of my prized keepsakes is the slide rule that got me through high school in the 1970s, which is the one that got my father through grammar school and university in the 1930s. I was pretty damn good with it at the time. Universities were allowing calculators by the time I got there, but I took it with me to all exams, in case the battery died.
Still got my old TI-83 from my high school days. I should get some batteries and see if it still works… Anyone ever try running Doom on one of them?