Why Arduino users so agressive?

[SiliconWizard]

That is pretty neat, Arduino works 'equally well' driving a VW Beetle or a F22 fighter jet!

Yes, there's even a rumor about Tesla considering using Arduino for their next gen autonomous driving units.

[ogden]

that Forth preacher can't [do anything] without language extension.

But ... that's how Forth DOES THINGS.

That was exactly my point - adding *unnecessary* language extensions is bad style of programming because it leads to unreadable, unsustainable in the long run code.

Not allowing for that is like complaining that you can't program in Smalltalk without constantly referring to the Class Browser, or about C++ redefining a shift operator to do IO

Redefining shift operator is common (cstdio) practice, it does not obfuscate anything. Every C++ programmer will immediately know what "shift operator to do IO" means.

Arduino Users (and Forth Users, and a lot of other XXX Users) aren't so much "aggressive" as "defensive."And they're defensive because they're often attacked...

Here Forth User promotes his "Forth mantra" very aggressively. That is far from "defensive".

I don't understand, could you elaborate what you mean by "language extension" ?

Language extensions means - you are *extending* programming language, adding new keywords & operators.

[techman-001]

you can't understand Forth without actually, you know .... LEARNING IT FIRST.

Heh.   I've notice that a FEATURE of "languages I like" is that programs are at least readable, and perhaps modifiable, by people who are NOT experts in the language.   The set of Algol-inspired languages are pretty good in that respect.  Assembly languages are sort-of OK for moderately traditional architectures, assuming that you have some expertise in SOME assembly language.
Forth and APL - not so much...

that Forth preacher can't [do anything] without language extension.

But ... that's how Forth DOES THINGS.Not allowing for that is like complaining that you can't program in Smalltalk without constantly referring to the Class Browser, or about C++ redefining a shift operator to do IO, or about bash shell scripts using large applications to do simple things (all of which I've complained about, BTW.)

Arduino Users (and Forth Users, and a lot of other XXX Users) aren't so much "aggressive" as "defensive."And they're defensive because they're often attacked...

So true and I think that the more common languages one knows, the easier others are to understand. That's a maxim for programmers anyway.

Forth is the exception along with LISP. Even the designer of Forth, Charles Moore said when asked "what is Forth" ... "I can't say for sure, but I know it when I see it".

Westfw; a very insightful explanation about Forth's main strength, you obviously "get it".

[techman-001]

that Forth preacher can't [do anything] without language extension.

But ... that's how Forth DOES THINGS.

That was exactly my point - adding *unnecessary* language extensions is bad style of programming because it leads to unreadable, unsustainable in the long run code.

Not allowing for that is like complaining that you can't program in Smalltalk without constantly referring to the Class Browser, or about C++ redefining a shift operator to do IO

Redefining shift operator is common (cstdio) practice, it does not obfuscate anything. Every C++ programmer will immediately know what "shift operator to do IO" means.

Arduino Users (and Forth Users, and a lot of other XXX Users) aren't so much "aggressive" as "defensive."And they're defensive because they're often attacked...

Here Forth User promotes his "Forth mantra" very aggressively. That is far from "defensive".

I don't understand, could you elaborate what you mean by "language extension" ?

Language extensions means - you are *extending* programming language, adding new keywords & operators.

So you're a computer language scientist? obviously one of renown to be able to make such sweeping condemnations of Forth, especially here among this distinguished company.

I'm sorry if you feel threatened by me, I hope you have a "safe space" nearby ?

It must be horrible for you to have your dearly held programming paradigms shoved aside so brutally by Forth, I can only imagine your confusion and distress.

[techman-001]

That is pretty neat, Arduino works 'equally well' driving a VW Beetle or a F22 fighter jet!

Yes, there's even a rumor about Tesla considering using Arduino for their next gen autonomous driving units.

You must be right because I heard a rumor about Big Oil buying Microchip/Atmel so they can close the factories and end the whole product line!

[Mr. Scram]

I’m sure people are terrified by the paradigms of what at this point is a curiosity from the digital middle ages. They quiver at the convenience of having to write half the language themselves.

[techman-001]

I’m sure people are terrified by the paradigms of what at this point is a curiosity from the digital middle ages. They quiver at the convenience of having to write half the language themselves.

Actually Forth was developed during the First Age of Enlightenment, long before the Arduino Dark Ages when trolls like you were dispatched by their masters to spread FUD  to the far corners of the Earth.

While plagiarism is clearly your best skill, there are designers who enjoy and excel at crafting their unique designs, and these often include software.

You just don't know any.

[ogden]

So you're a computer language scientist?

No credentials are necessary to know that Forth is playground programming language for prototyping, research and hobby. No serious things are made using Forth and if they were - better manufacturers put "Forth inside" sticker on so we know what to avoid. There is no "MISRA Forth" for a reason, but MISRA C and MISRA C++ instead.

[techman-001]

So you're a computer language scientist?

No credentials are necessary to know that Forth is playground programming language for prototyping, research and hobby. No serious things are made using Forth and if they were - better manufacturers put "Forth inside" sticker on so we know what to avoid. There is no "MISRA Forth" for a reason, but MISRA C and MISRA C++ instead.

NASA may disagree with you, not that you'd (obviously) ever acknowledge it.

MISRA - The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association.
"MISRA C is a set of software development guidelines for the C programming language developed by MISRA. Its aims are to facilitate code safety, security, portability and reliability in the context of embedded systems, specifically those systems programmed in ISO C / C90 / C99."

It seems that MISRA is claiming that C and C++ are unsafe in the context of embedded systems?

"aims are to facilitate code safety, security, portability and reliability in the context of embedded systems"

Maybe they should use Forth like NASA ?

[ogden]

It seems that MISRA is claiming that C and C++ are unsafe in the context of embedded systems?

 

Maybe they should use Forth like NASA ?

Stack-based, no type checking programming language for mission critical systems? - LOL. NASA used Forth exclusively on science, research & some comms hardware. Their Forth project page is long gone, last seen 14 April 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20110204160744/http://forth.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[sokoloff]

I think it's a mistake to assume that decisions in space flight are made totally on the merits or that space flight is any less fraught with personal preferences and politics than any other engineering endeavor that humans undertake.

The saga of Lisp at JPL: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

I'm sure we can find screeds railing against other languages as well.

[techman-001]

Maybe they should use Forth like NASA ?

Stack-based, no type checking programming language for mission critical systems? - LOL. NASA used Forth exclusively on science, research & some comms hardware. Their Forth project page is long gone, last seen 14 April 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20110204160744/http://forth.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Forth was used in 8 on board mission critical computers on the ESA Philae Spacecraft in 2014, that's a little later than 14 April 2003, not that you would ever acknowledge it.

Forth is being used right now, today. One new device is a wearable unit for the treatment of chronic back pain.

Perhaps they will make one for people like you who suffer debilitating mental pain every time they see the word "Forth" ?

[techman-001]

I think it's a mistake to assume that decisions in space flight are made totally on the merits or that space flight is any less fraught with personal preferences and politics than any other engineering endeavor that humans undertake.

The saga of Lisp at JPL: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

I'm sure we can find screeds railing against other languages as well.

Thanks for the link, it's a fascinating story and so believable.

[KL27x]

^You can just hit the thank you button, rather than copypasta an entire post just to say thank you.

Advice: when more than half the posts in a thread are from the same person, that person can appear to be a bit of a troll. Sitting down and quote/replying to 4-5 posts in a row? Not a good look.

I have no problem with anyone sharing something they are passionate about or proficient in, and even better if it is both. Keep it coming. Stop worrying about other people.

No need to quote/reply to this thread. If you read it, great. If you didn't, fine. Please don't reply.

[westfw]

But ... that's how Forth DOES THINGS.

That was exactly my point - adding *unnecessary* language extensions is bad style of programming because it leads to unreadable, unsustainable in the long run code.

Sort of like C++ operator overloading, or (more generally) objects with inconsistent method names and/or inheritance leading to inappropriate behavior and excessive memory use?  Or, for that matter, macro use in assembly language.  Seems to me that it's all a matter of programming style - if you do things that are widely, or even locally, standardized and common, it should all be OK.  Redefine stuff or head off in weird directions, and you get an unreadable mess.  (for example, I've looked at some of the C++ STL code, and find it ... so far removed from "basic C++" as to be essentially unreadable.  (there's enough consistency there that I'm sure all that would clear up, given an appropriate style guide, mentor, and/or a couple of years of experience.  Exactly!))

Forth was developed during the First Age of Enlightenment

Alas, I'd say that was developed somewhat before the first age of enlightenment, and suffers significantly from the whole "identifiers should be short to save storage space and typing" (like APL!)  And thus it was standardized.  Forth would be improved, IMO, if there were a standard set of "long" names for all the standard words (you know, like "print" instead of "." and "store" instead of "!")
(Heh.  You'd get something that looked like Postscript, I guess.   I rather liked Postscript...)

That is far from "defensive".

"The best defense is a good offense."
And we're talking about the "Aggressive Arduino Folk" too, remember.

Redefining shift operator is common (cstdio) practice ... Every C++ programmer will immediately know what "shift operator to do IO" means.

Well, too many "C++ programmers" won't know that it was a shift operator.  They come into the embedded arena asking questions like "I don't see how UARTSTATUS & 1<<RXRDY checks the status bit when << is an output operation."  (which really isn't that far from the confusion I experienced the first time I (a longtime embedded C programmer) saw stdio << "my number is" << mynumber. "Oh we'll just take a well-known binary operator and have the result of the operation be the same as the first operand, and do nothing but side-effects with the second operand."  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.)

Language extensions means - you are *extending* programming language, adding new keywords & operators.

Technically speaking, I don't think that Forth HAS "operators" or "keywords."    Everything is a function.  Some functions are standardized...

[ogden]

Technically speaking, I don't think that Forth HAS "operators" or "keywords."    Everything is a function.  Some functions are standardized...

If you say so. BTW "command" was the name used by @techman-001. I assumed he had operator in mind. My bad.

Forth was used in 8 on board mission critical computers on the ESA Philae Spacecraft in 2014, that's a little later than 14 April 2003, not that you would ever acknowledge it.

Thank you. Now it is clear why it failed to fire thrusters during landing

Forth is being used right now, today. One new device is a wearable unit for the treatment of chronic back pain.

You managed to find not one but even two "Forth inside" embedded products dated after 2003. Congrats! With such approach one perhaps can prove that Perl or even PHP is very popular embedded language. My point of mentioning MISRA C/C++ was fact that those are standards for safety-critical systems including drive-by-wire. We rely our lives on MISRA C/C++ while driving modern cars. I do not see anybody using Forth in such systems. Every programming language have it's rights to exist, use Forth as much as you like, but as soon as you come with blanket statement "Forth computer is better than Arduino/whatever" - expect to defend your arguments. Perhaps fight was your intention, that's why you promoted your Forth so annoyingly?

[Mr. Scram]

Actually Forth was developed during the First Age of Enlightenment, long before the Arduino Dark Ages when trolls like you were dispatched by their masters to spread FUD  to the far corners of the Earth.

While plagiarism is clearly your best skill, there are designers who enjoy and excel at crafting their unique designs, and these often include software.

You just don't know any.

In the mind of the extremist anyone who doesn't advocate his camp is part of the enemy. The real world obviously isn't black and white. I understand the acuity of the mind fading as you start running out of years and creativity may suffer as a consequence, but the troll remark didn't pan out the first three times so repetition is unlikely to yield different results. For someone who claims to have lived through the entirety of human history you seem confused about the order in which things occurred but I can imagine the memory fading after the first half century or so. The Dark Ages came before the Age of Enlightenment.

The use of libraries in which you partake but somehow also prefer to ridicule by calling it "plagiarism" would be a prime example of Isaac Newton's famous remark "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants". As it happens this remark was part of the person and movement which launched Europe from the Middle Ages into Enlightenment by organizing the development of knowledge into something more structured. It's a method which allows people to utilize the work of others in useful ways. As fun as it is to reinvent the wheel it's not effective to start over from scratch every time. So much so that essentially the entire software industry works with building blocks developed by others. You can either roll your own inevitably shoddy version or use a library optimized to the hilt. Besides just writing your own code is an entirely arbitrary hill to die on. Why not design your own language or chips or get a shovel and some sand and get baking? You're blagging other's hard work whatever you do.

[techman-001]

Forth is being used right now, today. One new device is a wearable unit for the treatment of chronic back pain.

You managed to find not one but even two "Forth inside" embedded products dated after 2003. Congrats!

You're welcome. it wasn't hard. I would have given more examples but why waste my time with you ?

[techman-001]

Actually Forth was developed during the First Age of Enlightenment, long before the Arduino Dark Ages when trolls like you were dispatched by their masters to spread FUD  to the far corners of the Earth.

While plagiarism is clearly your best skill, there are designers who enjoy and excel at crafting their unique designs, and these often include software.

You just don't know any.

In the mind of the extremist anyone who doesn't advocate his camp is part of the enemy.

Yes, yes, we all know that ... but enough about you and Arduino.

[ogden]

You managed to find not one but even two "Forth inside" embedded products dated after 2003. Congrats!

You're welcome. it wasn't hard. I would have given more examples but why waste my time with you ?

Don't bother indeed. It is clear that Forth is failing language because 50% of the examples you mention had programming error and remaining 50% has no trace in the internet search engines. Have a good one.

[wilfred]

I think it's a mistake to assume that decisions in space flight are made totally on the merits or that space flight is any less fraught with personal preferences and politics than any other engineering endeavor that humans undertake.

The saga of Lisp at JPL: http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

I'm sure we can find screeds railing against other languages as well.

The one thing I took from that document was the inclination of the author to attribute code quality to the language it is written in. That's so common. You can write good reliable code in C and bad code in LISP.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes, yes, we all know that ... but enough about you and Arduino.

We know you like to needlessly repeat matters that have already been done but ignoring almost all of the very post you're responding to is a bit worrisome. It seems your mind may have slipped more than we already feared. Read the post a couple times more if you must. We'll go as slow as is needed for you to keep up. Meanwhile you may tell us how long it took you to write the temperature sensor code from start to finish so we have some objective metrics to compare.

[Canis Dirus Leidy]

No credentials are necessary to know that Forth is playground programming language for prototyping, research and hobby. No serious things are made using Forth and if they were - better manufacturers put "Forth inside" sticker on so we know what to avoid.

Ahem.

[Kjelt]

No credentials are necessary to know that Forth is playground programming language for prototyping, research and hobby. No serious things are made using Forth and if they were - better manufacturers put "Forth inside" sticker on so we know what to avoid.

Ahem.

You needed a webarchive to find that 
NASA is not really representative for this sort of thing, they are looking for a COBOL / Fortran programmer to maintain their Voyager spacecraft that were launched when the Vietnam War was still going on  and already left the solar system, cool hell yes, representative for businesses , hell no!
https://www.geek.com/news/nasa-seeks-programmer-fluent-in-60-year-old-languages-to-work-on-voyager-1638276/

[Mr. Scram]

It was also already posted by ogden just a few posts earlier.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/why-arduino-users-so-agressive/msg2645217/#msg2645217