If my inexperience in Factor makes me unqualified to write this book, then I
will drop the project. That is largely up to the more experienced Factor
programmers such as yourself --- whether or not they are willing to continue
to provide rewrites and improvements for my Factor code that I include in
Your book is going to be a lifesaver `some day for someone, so never think
of dropping this project. Writing is a creative adventure ..... This is your
turn to contribute to this community, so just do it!
Regards,
Emeka
On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Hugh Aguilar <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:21:17 +1300
> > From: Chris Double <[email protected]>
> > Subject: Re: [Factor-talk] "Factor vs. Forth" --- the book
> > To: [email protected]
> > Message-ID:
> > <[email protected]>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> > It's an interesting read - I like seeing what a Forth programmers
> > perspective is on Factor. Personally I find your use of the term 'real
> > world' odd since the meaning is obviously different depending on the
> > type of development you do. To me, 'real world' is any application
> > that gets used. Including web applications (What I tend to use and
> > develop in Factor) and desktop applications.
> >
> > Some of the Factor examples could do with tweaking. One quick example
> > is your first definition of 'pars':
>
> Thanks for the feedback. It is not my intention with this book to represent
> myself as the big Factor export. I am a Forth programmer first and
> foremost.
> I think that my book is useful primarily for comparing Factor to Forth, as
> the title suggests, and that I am the most appropriate author given my
> background in Forth. I am going to need some help with the Factor code
> though --- both you and Slava have already provided good rewrites for my
> pars function.
>
> If my inexperience in Factor makes me unqualified to write this book, then
> I
> will drop the project. That is largely up to the more experienced Factor
> programmers such as yourself --- whether or not they are willing to
> continue
> to provide rewrites and improvements for my Factor code that I include in
> the book. Slava did say that many people have started to write such a book,
> but that all of given up shortly thereafter. To a certain extent, I am
> writing this book for myself as much as for other people --- it is helping
> me to come to grips with Factor.
>
> As for my use of the term "real-world," that is pretty typical among people
> who do motion-control work. You may not be aware of this, but those folks
> consider desktop computers to be *Boring* with a capital `B'. This is also
> what a lot of non-technical people think. Over the summer I worked on a
> cattle ranch helping with the haying. When I told my boss that I normally
> work as a computer programmer, he said: "I don't know how you do it. That
> is
> just so boring, because you are just sitting there in front of the computer
> all day." This is despite the fact that he had spent the entire day sitting
> in front of a computer. In his tractor there is a computer connected to the
> round baler that he is pulling, that provides continuous information about
> what is going on back there. It tells him how fat the bale is on each end
> so
> that he can steer into the windrow correctly, so as to get a nice
> cylindrical bale that is not tapered, nor fat in the middle like a whiskey
> barrel. This is the real world though --- this has nothing to do with
> sitting in front of a computer at a desk --- he thinks that the baler is
> hella cool technology (it cost $40,000, so it ought to be).
>
> Of course, the avoidance of desktop computers can be taken to an extreme
> too. That guy's wife, who is the owner of the ranch, told me that she
> calculates her finances using a spreadsheet --- meaning a gigantic sheet of
> paper on the kitchen table. This is how her mother did it when she was
> alive, and most likely how her daughter does it, and how her grand-daughter
> will also do it when she grows up. That is actually somewhat ridiculous in
> the year 2009, though. :-)
>
> P.S. for Emeka --- I will provide a postscript or pdf file in addition to
> the dvi file for my next update.
>
>
>
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