|
Bob, thanks for your lengthy and detailed response, and I am
pleased that I perhaps acted as a catalyst.
I look forward to the updated 4th CoSY.
Thanks - Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Armstrong
Date: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 6:55 pm
Subject: Re: CoSy?
To: andywarren at optonline . net
Cc: Kristan Paige Armstrong
Wow !
I didn't think anybody had followed CoSy all these years .
I use Reva.CoSy as my diary&log and to store my
reference account IDs and passwords , etc , and my Shopping list .
It overcomes one of the fatal issues with K :
inability to copy and paste from other applications . Development
has been static for perhaps 2 years now , partially by the
diversion of a painful but addictive amount of time understanding
, which to me means expressing the essential mathematics in
executable array language starting with the simplest cases
in the classical
manner , the
physics of planetary temperature to battle the global statist
anti-CO2 fraud . Since you are somewhat familiar with K.Cosy
, you've motivated me to upload the K.Cosy
Job containing all my notes and computations concerning planetary
temperature to http://cosy.com/Science/K_CoSy_Warm.txt
.
I spent a good bit of the holiday , weighing moving the most
important ideas and algorithms from Reva.CoSy to Factor
, "an expressive, fast and full-featured Concatenative language invented by Slava Pestov" . Slava is a world brilliant guy
whose jEdit
I've been using since I started 4th.CoSy . His Google
TechTalk provides working solutions to issues of implementing
what Iverson would call adverbs which I am still wrestling
with . Factor is a language with wide ranging libraries ,
and a significant user community . By Thursday night , I had
tentatively decided to migrate .
By Sunday , I had decided that , however little time for , and slow
the rate of , making progress on 4th.CoSy , it`s worth
is on several grounds .
- CoSy is built in a Forth built directly in
about 50kb Intel architecture code ; Factor is about 12k
lines of C . One of my goals is open and transparent code
down to the silicon .
- The philosophical goal of CoSy , inherited from APL
, is maximally succinct notation with maximally coherent
vocabulary for the executable expression of algorithms . Factor
has a whole kitchen sink of "computer science" structures and
concepts , but no overriding , crystalline vocabulary ( object & applicative verbs ) . For instance , it has both
non-expandable "arrays" and extensible "sequences" . In
CoSy , all data objects are extensible "sequences"
, or lists . An example of the omissions arising
from the sink full of objects path of Factor is the
apparent lack of a verb returning the number of items in a
sequence . It's one of the essential words you look for in an APL
.
- 4th.CoSy is inheriting K's very simple K-tree
structure where all objects are rows of 3 item lists of symbols
, values , and attributes . Not coming from an APL
background , such a coherent list based structure is not in Factor's
ken .
- Factor is content with the postfix syntax
intrinsic to concatenative languages . I seek the visual
simplicity which comes with APL's infix which
allows verbs themselves to delimit lists . Thus
{ 1 2 3 } { 3 2 1 } [ + ] 2map
in Factor becomes
1 2 3 + 3 2 1
in CoSy . The atomic application of verbs which eliminates
the need for the map is already implemented , In current
Reva.CoSy it's : i( 1 2 3 )i i( 3 2 1 )i +i .
- Slava uses a generational garbage collector . Following
Arthur Whitney , I am reference counting . This will
eventually permit Arthur's never collect , slot inventory method .
While I could translate my modulo indexed lists of lists
augmenting Factor's classes , in the same amount of time , I
can make major advances on a much leaner but more coherent Reva.CoSy
. None the less , there is a lot to learn from
Pestov's Factor .
You've added to my motivation to perhaps over christmas make time to
do some of the minimal vocabulary enhancements which may truly wake
up my current Reva.CoSy into a dynamic , workspace
like environment . Thanks .
Hi Bob,
What's the latest
with CoSy?
I played a little
with the APL version and K version, and worked up to the Reva
version. It crashes pretty frequently on me (XP, SP3), so I
didn't get very far.
Thanks, Andy
Hi Andy ,
I'm curious how you
happened on my work
> Comment from user:
> Hi Bob,
> I downloaded the
FORTH version but it's very rough.
That's kind . Various
things have kept me from making much progress on it
in recent months .
> I'd like to have a
look at the old APL version.
It's been a loong time
since I last looked at the original flat APL
version and took a
while til I realized the only place to access it is in
the Yahoo files . But , it seems the files in
CoSy2000.EXE still run under
XP .
I've made you a member
to give you access .
The last K version is
available at http://cosy.com/K/CoSy/membs/ . I still
use the K version for
all my accounting .
> Best regards, Andy
Warren
Sometime soon I'll
reorganize access to the old work . It's pretty
inaccessible currently
.
Thanks for your
interest .
-- Bob
Armstrong -- www.CoSy.com -- 719-337-2733 --
--
-- Bob Armstrong -- CoSy.com
-- 719-337-2733 -- SKYPE : cosybob
TURNING THOUGHTS INTO COMPUTATIONS
I reserve the right to post all
communications
I receive or generate to CoSy website for further reflection .
|
