Joined: Fri Aug 30, 2002 1:09 am
Posts: 8447
Location: Southern California
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BDD, here is another one. It's may not be an "official" reproduction (like the other one from Forth, Inc. who published the paper book), but should be mostly the same, just without the original cartoons from comedian Leo Brodie. It looks like it lacks a "—>Next" and "Previous<—" page link on each page, but they're all linked into the index. I'm sure I've come across other transcriptions on the web too. And you can always turn up the print size on the screen with <Ctrl>+. I don't recall ever seeing a .pdf one. I bought my paper one long ago.
"Thinking Forth" (by the same author) is the next one, and, although focused on Forth, really has more to do with programming philosophy— it's just that the ideas are brought out in Forth. That one is available in .pdf—the 2004 edition—at http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinkin ... f/download . Looking over the preface and other parts, I think I ought to re-read the book now in its latest revision. From the preface, on page 13:
Quote: Building models in the mind is both the challenge and the joy of programming. How should we prepare for it? Arm ourselves with better debuggers, decompilers, and disassemblers? They help, but our most essential tools and techniques are mental. We need a consistent and practical methodology for thinking about software problems. That is what I have tried to capture in this book. Thinking Forth is meant for anyone interested in writing software to solve problems. It focuses on design and implementation; deciding what you want to accomplish, designing the components of the system, and finally building the program.
The book stresses the importance of writing programs that not only work, but that are also readable, logical, and that express the best solution in the simplest terms.
Although most of the principles described here can be applied to any language, I've presented them in the context of Forth. Forth is a language, an operating system, a set of tools, and a philosophy. It is an ideal means for thinking because it corresponds to the way our minds work. Thinking Forth is thinking simple, thinking elegant, thinking flexible. It is not restrictive, not complicated, not over-general. You don't have to know Forth to benefit from this book. Thinking Forth synthesizes the Forth approach with many principles taught by modern computer science. The marriage of Forth's simplicity with the traditional disciplines of analysis and style will give you a new and better way to look at software problems and will be helpful in all areas of computer application.
If you want to learn more about Forth, another book of mine, Starting Forth, covers the language aspects of Forth[...]
Now looking further at Forth, Inc.'s website, a couple more paper books that interest me are:
Forth Programmer's Handbook A detailed, technical Forth manual for experienced programmers, and
Forth Application Techniques This Forth-programming tutorial builds practical Forth skills quickly.
(These pages give the table of contents and good descriptions of the books. I recommend a look!)
_________________ http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?
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