Complexity is the problem. Count the parts!
Charles Moore, the venerable inventor of FORTH, has this to say regarding the likely-dim future of technology:
Complexity is the problem. Moving it from hardware to software, or vice versa, doesn’t help. Simplicity is the only answer. There was a product many years ago called the Canon Cat. It was a simple, dedicated word processor; done very nicely in Forth. Didn’t succeed commercially. But then, most products don’t. I despair. Technology, and our very civilization, will get more and more complex until it collapses. There is no opposing pressure to limit this growth. No environmental group saying: Count the parts in a hybrid car to judge its efficiency or reliability or maintainability. All I can do is provide existence proofs: Forth is a simple language; OKAD is a simple design tool; GreenArrays offers simple computer chips. No one is paying any attention."
Will anyone listen?
Dear Anonymous,
The reason why you see mostly hot air in this blog is that:
A) philosophizing is an easier and more public act than writing code, esp. on a deliberately non-collaborative project, and
B) this is my designated place for spewing hot air.
Contrary to popular belief, I have been doing plenty of real work on Loper - I simply no longer feel any compulsion to post code for public ridicule until it sums to something undeniably interesting.
In addition to "angst", you will find a number of specific complaints as food for thought - along with proposed solutions, often discovered before I was born - and *entirely ignored to this day.* See the discussion of automatic register discipline, for example.
If you have grown bored with my own writings, I invite you to delve into the recommended readings: for instance, the Lambda Papers. You will not be disappointed.
Cheers,
S. Datskovskiy
Why is your emphasis on "everything sucks" and not "I should make something that doesn't suck"? With the general tone of this blog (that I still read, hoping it will change) I can only see it being a collection of continued angst until you die...
I apologise for my overly-harsh remark, which I wrote rather too quickly. Since you had previously presented some code that boots, I assumed that you'd be committing to that repository. I'm interested, then, to see what becomes of Loper. 🙂