18 Jun
1998
18 Jun
'98
7:12 p.m.
Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
John Foust wrote:
Hmm. I'd read that he was just a prolific programmer and wrote FORTH
simply because he wanted something REALLY efficient for his own coding
efforts....
--
mor(a)crl.com
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
At 06:39 PM 6/17/98 -0700, Greg Troutman wrote:
One might argue that he didn't need something as powerful
as an Atari 800XL to do that. :-) These days, computer-aided
hobby astronomer hackers are modifying Quickcams to use as
el cheapo CCD imagers, running multimedia star-mapping tools
on Windows laptops in the field, etc. I've even thought about
writing a star-finder for my PalmPilot, having picked up
an 8" Dobs for my birthday. (Of course, it's been cloudy
ever since.) And the PalmPilot isn't far from the Atari ST
or Amiga 1000 - 68000-ish chip, 3 megs of RAM, except it
runs for three weeks on two AAAs.
After all, Charles Moore created FORTH to control telescopes, too.
No, Charles Moore created FORTH as a notation system for teaching
mathematics -- it just happened that when the notation system was
converted to a programming language that it became handy for such
things as controlling telescopes. From the photos I'd like to point out that he
was actually using an
800XL. Anyway the book is highly recommended not only for the
Atari
mention, but more so for it's majestic presentation of numerous
individuals who pursue science purely for the love of it.