SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

Date:	Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:45:35 -0700
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	"SCOUG Programming SIG" <scoug-programming@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Going forward

Content Type: text/plain

After a frequently contentious discussion in which we reached
a consensus on direction of the Programming SIG we can look
forward to a different challenge. I admit that I lost it
completely when Steven asserted that PL/I was a subset of
ADA. In the end those present did agree on an approach to
take.

That approach involves a study of Forth. You can prep for it
by going to the internet, googling "forth", and coming up
among other references one linking to forth.org. From that
website you can gain access from the "Tutotials and primers"
link to another link to an online edition of Leo Brodie's
"Starting Forth", which we will use as a guide among others.

Now Forth belongs to a class of Threaded Interpretive
Languages (TILs) which share a common, though not
necessarily identical, architectures. To assist in expanding our
detailed knowledge of TILs we will refer to Loeliger's
"Threaded Interpretive Languages" and Burge's "Recursive
Programming Techniques" in which he introduces Landin's
SECD (Stack, Environment, Control, Dump) machine, which you
can also google.

This approach allows us to work from the inside out. We gain
experience with writing an interpreter, familiarity with
assembly language, and a means of extending a language.
Once we have confidence with the first two (interpreter and
assembly language) then we can look at extending it to
include the operators of APL. From there we can go on to
adding the functions of LISP along with that of the list
aggregate. This last with then lead to the two-stage proof
engine of logic programming, the basis for all fourth
generation programming languages.

We have yet to determine the means by which readers on this
list who cannot attend the meetings will nevertheless follow
their progress.

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