SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

Date:	Sun, 7 Sep 2008 10:47:55 -0700
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Drafting a lesson plan

Content Type: text/plain

I will not attend the September SCOUG meeting. I will be down the
street at CSUF at a Festival of Fruit instead. Nevertheless I want to
lay out the paths we will take and the steps on them into a lesson plan
amenable as much as possible to self-study.

As APL operators remain a part of that journey I thought for self-study
we might go to the source, Iverson's 1962 "A Programming Language" which
I used in a UCLA extension class that year, still have and still revere.
I googled for the title only to discover that the asking price came to
$175. Wow! Well. let's go for an alternate like "APL2 at a Glance"
which came with each PC APL software package. $67. Then finally what
about the APL Language Reference manual from IBM. Free with download of
PDF version. That's more like it. SH21-1061. We'll use that.

We have two things initially we want to achieve with FORTH, assembling
FORTH.exe with an understanding of its components and gaining experience
in the language. Though I have references on FORTH I fear for googling
the titles. For the daring you might seek out a copy of Brodie's
"Starting FORTH". I noted at the last meeting that Sheridan had a copy
of Loeliger's "Threaded Interpretive Languages". I don't remember it
being inexpensive to begin with. We have as well Burge's "Recursive
Programming Techniques" which describes the SECD machine which lies at
the heart of interpretive systems.

So we have assembly language, FORTH, APL2 and interpretive engines,
different intersecting paths along our journey that we need somehow to
lay out in a stepwise manner that we can all follow. Beyond that we
need people willing to act as guides at various points along the way. I
want to make clear that this is a "we" trip, not a "me" one. So
consider how and where you might volunteer and contribute.

We have stated that we will document each step so that those who follow
will not have to refer to another source. That means it must have a
clarity and communicate to each of us to insure the same for others who
might want to pursue the same journey.

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