Re: How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?
On 18 Aug, 11:09, spinoza wrote: > On Aug 18, 1:21 am, Standish P wrote: > > > This you might want to take this to the Forth people because they are > > marketing their language as a cure for all that plagues programming > > today. > > No, they're not. That I agree with. > Stack based languages have seen better days and Forth > (and the SL/1 language I supported with compilers at Bell-Northern > Research) were last in fashion in the 1970s. Processors seldom could > multitask, so it wasn't recognized that the stack could be a > performance bottleneck, where stack operations cannot be pipelined or > executed in parallel. > > John Hennessy of Stanford and MIPS made the stack must die case at ACM > ASPLOS in 1987. Niklaus Wirth was also at this conference at which I > was a fly on the wall, maintaining that the stack was good for > reliability and verifiability of software. > > Forth had a snowball's chance because it forces ordinary programmers > to think in Reverse Polish notation and is for the above reasons hard > to pipeline, although of course it can be pipelined. I really don't understand much of what you're saying here; Forth can be implemented on processors that have several hardware assisted stacks, 1 stack or even no stack at all. Multitasking? Why's that a problem? And why is it hard to pipeline? Are you thinking of a specific processor? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?
On 21 Aug, 06:42, Standish P wrote: > On Aug 20, 3:51 pm, Hugh Aguilar wrote: > > > > > On Aug 18, 6:23 pm, Standish P wrote: > > > > On Aug 17, 6:38 pm, John Passaniti wrote: > > > > > You asked if Forth "borrowed" lists from Lisp. It did not. In Lisp, > > > > lists are constructed with pair of pointers called a "cons cell". > > > > That is the most primitive component that makes up a list. Forth has > > > > no such thing; in Forth, the dictionary (which is traditionally, but > > > > not necessarily a list) is a data structure that links to the previous > > > > word with a pointer. > > > > Would you show me a picture, ascii art or whatever for Forth ? I know > > > what lisp lists look like so I dont need that for comparison. Forth > > > must have a convention and a standard or preferred practice for its > > > dicts. However, let me tell you that in postscript the dictionaries > > > can be nested inside other dictionaries and any such hiearchical > > > structure is a nested associative list, which is what linked list, > > > nested dictionaries, nested tables are. > > > You can see an example of lists in my novice package (in the list.4th > > file):http://www.forth.org/novice.html > > Also in there is symtab, which is a data structure intended to be used > > for symbol tables (dictionaries). Almost nobody uses linked lists for > > the dictionary anymore (the FIG compilers of the 1970s did, but they > > are obsolete). > > > I must say, I've read through this entire thread and I didn't > > understand *anything* that *anybody* was saying (especially the OP). > > You didnt understand anything because no one explained anything > coherently. It indicates that you're asking a question that *you don't understand*. I'm continually amazed that people come to Usenet, wikis, websites and other fora and ask questions that even the most basic of research (and a bit of care with terminology aka "using the right words") would show to be confused. A quick scan of the available literature on garbage collection and stacks, starting with the fundamentals, would surely show you what you need to know. > Admittedly, I am asking a question that would be thought > provoking to those who claim to be "experts" but these experts are > actually very stingy and mean business people, most certainly worse > than Bill Gates, only it did not occur to them his ideas and at the > right time. > What surprises may is that anyone bothered to answer, as your question was neither "thought provoking" nor in need of attention from an expert. Their generosity in the face of so much stupidity stands out as remarkable. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?
On 21 Aug, 17:58, Hugh Aguilar wrote: > On Aug 21, 5:29 am, Alex McDonald wrote: > > > On 21 Aug, 06:42, Standish P wrote: > > > Admittedly, I am asking a question that would be thought > > > provoking to those who claim to be "experts" but these experts are > > > actually very stingy and mean business people, most certainly worse > > > than Bill Gates, only it did not occur to them his ideas and at the > > > right time. > > > What surprises may is that anyone bothered to answer, as your question > > was neither "thought provoking" nor in need of attention from an > > expert. Their generosity in the face of so much stupidity stands out > > as remarkable. > > I wouldn't call the OP "stupid," which is just mean-spirited. Perhaps I'm just getting less forgiving the older I get, or the more I read here. The internet is a fine resource for research, and tools like google, archivx and so on are easy to access and take but a little effort to use. > That is > not much of a welcome wagon for somebody who might learn Forth > eventually and join our rather diminished ranks. I care neither to be included in your "diminished ranks", nor do I take much regard of popularity as you define it. Standish P doesn't want to join anything; he (like you) has an agenda for yet another club with a membership of one. > Lets go with "over- > educated" instead! I thought that his question was vague. It seemed > like the kind of question that students pose to their professor in > class to impress him with their thoughtfulness, so that he'll forget > that they never did get any of their homework-assignment programs to > actually work. It didn't work. He hasn't done any homework, neither do you, and it shows. > I yet maintain that writing programs is what > programming is all about. You remind me of those that would build a house without an architect, or fly without bothering to study the weather. > > I see a lot of pseudo-intellectual blather on comp.lang.forth. The > following is a pretty good example, in which Alex mixes big pseudo- > intellectual words such as "scintilla" "Scintilla" gets about 2,080,000 results on google; "blather" gets about 876,000 results. O Hugh, you pseudo-intellectual you! > with gutter language such as > "turd" About 5,910,000 results. It has a long history, even getting a mention in the Wyclif's 13th century bible. > in an ungrammatical mish-mash --- and defends the overuse of > the return stack for holding temporary data as being readable(?!): I did? Where? You're making stuff up. Again. > http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/4... > > On Jul 23, 4:43 pm, Alex McDonald wrote: > > > Whereas yours contained several tens, and nearly every one of them is > > wrong. Hugh, do you actually have any evidence -- even a scintilla -- > > that supports this log winded opinions-as-fact post? Take any of the > > statements you make, and demonstrate that you can justify it. > > Reminding us that you said it before doesn't count. > > > Start with this turd of an assertion and see if you can polish it; > > "Most of the time, when Forth code gets really ugly, it is because of > > an overuse of >R...R> --- that is a big reason why people use GCC > > rather than Forth." > Something you never did address, probably because the statement you made is just another symptom of Aguilar's Disease; presenting as fact an opinion based on personal experience, limited observation and no research. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?
On 24 Aug, 01:00, Hugh Aguilar wrote: > On Aug 21, 12:32 pm, Alex McDonald wrote: > > > "Scintilla" gets about 2,080,000 results on google; "blather" gets > > about 876,000 results. O Hugh, you pseudo-intellectual you! > > > > with gutter language such as > > > "turd" > > > About 5,910,000 results. It has a long history, even getting a mention > > in the Wyclif's 13th century bible. > > You looked up "blather" and "turd" on google *AND* you are not a > pseudo-intellectual??? That is funny! > > I don't consider myself to be a pseudo-intellectual. I don't have any > education however, so a pseudo-intellectual is the only kind of > intellectual that I could be. I don't have any formal CS education, nor a degree in anything else. But that doesn't make me an anti-intellectual by instinct (the instinct would be jealousy, I guess), nor does it stop me from learning. Or using Google, something I'm sure you do too. We have a great degree of admiration and fondness for intellectuals in Europe; the French in particular hold them in very high regard. Perhaps disdain of learning and further education is peculiar to a certain section of American society, as the label "intellectual" (often, "liberal intellectual") appears to be used as a derogatory term. I have no idea what a pseudo-intellectual might be, but it's evident you mean it in much the same way. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: How far can stack [LIFO] solve do automatic garbage collection and prevent memory leak ?
On 25 Aug, 01:00, Hugh Aguilar wrote: > On Aug 24, 4:17 pm, Richard Owlett wrote: > > > Hugh Aguilar wrote: > > > [SNIP ;] > > > > The real problem here is that C, Forth and C++ lack automatic garbage > > > collection. If I have a program in which I have to worry about memory > > > leaks (as described above), I would be better off to ignore C, Forth > > > and C++ and just use a language that supports garbage collection. Why > > > should I waste my time carefully freeing up heap space? I will very > > > likely not find everything but yet have a few memory leaks anyway. > > > IOW Hugh has surpassed GIGO to achieve AGG - > > *A*utomatic*G*arbage*G*eneration ;) > > The C programmers reading this are likely wondering why I'm being > attacked. The reason is that Elizabeth Rather has made it clear to > everybody that this is what she > wants:http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread/thread/c... > > Every Forth programmer who aspires to get a job at Forth Inc. is > obliged to attack me. Attacking my software that I posted on the FIG > site is preferred, but personal attacks work too. It is a loyalty > test. Complete bollox. A pox on your persecution fantasies. This isn't about Elizabeth Rather or Forth Inc. It's about your massive ego and blind ignorance. Your example of writing code with memory leaks *and not caring because it's a waste of your time* makes me think that you've never been a programmer of any sort. Ever. In a commercial environment, your slide rule code would be rejected during unit testing, and you'd be fired and your code sent to the bit bucket. This isn't about CS BS; this is about making sure that banks accounts square, that planes fly, that nuclear reactors stay sub-critical; that applications can run 24 by 7, 365 days a year without requiring any human attention. So who designs and writes compilers for fail-safe systems? Who designs and writes operating systems that will run for years, non-stop? Where do they get the assurance that what they're writing is correct -- and provably so? From people that do research, hard math, have degrees, and design algorithms and develop all those other abstract ideas you seem so keen to reject as high-falutin' nonsense. I'd rather poke myself in the eye than run any of the crap you've written. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
