Posting a quick TL;DW. A minute into the video Chuck Moore says that Windows updates (on 11 and 10) have caused colorForth to crash, with Chuck thinking it's a graphical problem. I may comment more, but I wanted to post this because I don't see it mentioned as a youtube comment.
Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!
> Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
Very unlikely. Far too many applications depend on those things. It's more likely that they accidentally changed something subtle that happened to break colorForth.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that Windows is now flagging and quarantining unsigned, unfamiliar executables that it catches making these draw calls or really any direct Win32 calls. Microsoft, and in particular Windows Defender which you can't really turn off anymore, has gotten pretty aggressive about blocking software for "security purposes".
Totally! At 87 that's gutsy! My very first paid programming work was in Forth on a 6502 platform in the '60s, building a networked accounting and flow management program for a water company, but I'm now 81 and very glad to be retired.
It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.
What would be the best use of his last few years? Sitting in an easy chair by the pool?
Using your last few years to exercise your brain and ward off cognitive decline might be the best way to ensure those last few years are fulfilling and not just marking time before the end.
I suppose there's meaning in searching for abstract logical truths, but he might
have other such pursuits. Or, he might even feel that it's mostly done already and became just another boring software maintenance project.
It's hard to imagine an extremely niche software tool to be the greatest meaning in someone's life.
Still the same dichotomy. Who's to say his other pursuits are "meaningless", and the likes of crosswords, sudoku, etc.? For all we know he might have some other projects that he considers more useful.
He does not think working on Colorforth is worth it anymore, so it could actually be detrimental to do so.
He himself said he didn't think it was worth it anymore and that he very rarely codes now. I respect him enough to assume he has some other pursuit more worthy of his attention.
>> Some people have trouble doing meaningless intellectual pursuits like crosswords, sudoku etc.
My Dad is like this. I'm like this. My son is like this.
Unless we're busy, pushing ourselves to build something, fix something or just outside doing something we don't feel the reward.
My Dad told his motto, "A rolling rock gathers no moss - until it finally stops rolling." He told me that in his 50's - he's in his 80's still out in the garage refinishing old furniture and giving it away. The drive the man has just never burns out.
Perhaps he has chosen the best use of his last few years to his own satisfaction, and doesn't feel the need to share every last detail about himself on the internet.
Isn't that part of the Forth mantra though, to be written to the lowest level possible, eschewing portability, interoperability, hard coding fonts, etc., to achieve the simplest, most minimal implementation possible?
Forth is generally all about minimalism as I understand it, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was just saying the man obviously wants to focus on something else at this stage of his life and that is perfectly okay. I think he might port to Raspberry Pi if he was a few years younger, but he pointed out that he didn't think it was worth it at this point.
I wonder sometimes if there's an earlier level of technology that society could basically "checkpoint" at and freeze, and then build off of. Capitalism today feels like it's hit the Red Queen Paradox - it goes around and around to keep the money flowing, but with very little actual progress. Indeed, most people seem to feel like the world is getting worse for all that work, and that many of the innovations of the last ~10-15 years are "fixing" things that weren't problems to begin with while creating new problems. And yet because all the substrate is shifting around, even if you don't break something someone else will. Could we go back to a world of redundant interchangeable parts where if somebody breaks something, you just cut them off and use a substitute that works just as well?
Or maybe that's well and truly gone and we're just fated to another dark age. I'm reminded of the Smarter Scrubber documentary that found that basically the whole supply chain was gone and it was impossible to make something useful in America.
Using your scale? ↑7 or ↑8. That seemed to be the sweet spot in capabilities to me, without getting to the point where engagement eats everything else including productivity and future maintenance.
Using semiconductor process nodes? 45-65nm. That was around the point that Moore's Law broke down. At that point, you could do most of the functionality that we depend upon computers for (eg. GUIs, 3D rendering, networking, basic machine-learning, some speech recognition and text synthesis). It also roughly corresponds to ↑7 or ↑8 on your scale, so it's self-consistent.
Conceptually? I'd like to have multiple checkpoints, so that if the ecosystem gets borked you can roll back further.
Why is your premise that this state of society is intrinsically caused by technological progress? The issues you describe seem to me a product of general economic trends.
Posting a quick TL;DW. A minute into the video Chuck Moore says that Windows updates (on 11 and 10) have caused colorForth to crash, with Chuck thinking it's a graphical problem. I may comment more, but I wanted to post this because I don't see it mentioned as a youtube comment.
Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!
> Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
Very unlikely. Far too many applications depend on those things. It's more likely that they accidentally changed something subtle that happened to break colorForth.
I'm guessing a lot of the legacy stuff that still uses it also depends on some other things they wanted to change too?
I wonder how well Proton would work for it...
It looks like colorForth runs in qemu or bochs according to documentation, so Proton/wine wouldn't be required.
I could've sworn I saw something in the last month or two about BITBLT or DirectX changes on Windows.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that Windows is now flagging and quarantining unsigned, unfamiliar executables that it catches making these draw calls or really any direct Win32 calls. Microsoft, and in particular Windows Defender which you can't really turn off anymore, has gotten pretty aggressive about blocking software for "security purposes".
Are we going from "the only stable ABI on Linux is Wine", to "the only stable ABI is Wine"?
(Especially now that .NET Framework was donated to Wine...)
If there is, does anyone have any info on this?
Very impressive to see Chuck Moore still going at it at the age of 87. I hope at that age I'm able to handle the minutiae of programming!
Totally! At 87 that's gutsy! My very first paid programming work was in Forth on a 6502 platform in the '60s, building a networked accounting and flow management program for a water company, but I'm now 81 and very glad to be retired.
It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.
What would be the best use of his last few years? Sitting in an easy chair by the pool?
Using your last few years to exercise your brain and ward off cognitive decline might be the best way to ensure those last few years are fulfilling and not just marking time before the end.
That's quite a dichotomy here. He can exercise his brain and ward off cognitive decline without working on Colorforth specifically...
Some people have trouble doing meaningless intellectual pursuits like crosswords, sudoku etc.
Working on Colorforth might be the greatest meaning in his life.
I suppose there's meaning in searching for abstract logical truths, but he might have other such pursuits. Or, he might even feel that it's mostly done already and became just another boring software maintenance project.
It's hard to imagine an extremely niche software tool to be the greatest meaning in someone's life.
Still the same dichotomy. Who's to say his other pursuits are "meaningless", and the likes of crosswords, sudoku, etc.? For all we know he might have some other projects that he considers more useful.
He does not think working on Colorforth is worth it anymore, so it could actually be detrimental to do so.
He himself said he didn't think it was worth it anymore and that he very rarely codes now. I respect him enough to assume he has some other pursuit more worthy of his attention.
>> Some people have trouble doing meaningless intellectual pursuits like crosswords, sudoku etc.
My Dad is like this. I'm like this. My son is like this.
Unless we're busy, pushing ourselves to build something, fix something or just outside doing something we don't feel the reward.
My Dad told his motto, "A rolling rock gathers no moss - until it finally stops rolling." He told me that in his 50's - he's in his 80's still out in the garage refinishing old furniture and giving it away. The drive the man has just never burns out.
Perhaps he has chosen the best use of his last few years to his own satisfaction, and doesn't feel the need to share every last detail about himself on the internet.
He specifically mentions hiking and staying healthy, I'd imagine he's not going to stop using his brain completely.
Isn't that part of the Forth mantra though, to be written to the lowest level possible, eschewing portability, interoperability, hard coding fonts, etc., to achieve the simplest, most minimal implementation possible?
https://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm
Forth is generally all about minimalism as I understand it, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was just saying the man obviously wants to focus on something else at this stage of his life and that is perfectly okay. I think he might port to Raspberry Pi if he was a few years younger, but he pointed out that he didn't think it was worth it at this point.
must. not. go. too. deep. into. forth. rabbithole.
I wonder sometimes if there's an earlier level of technology that society could basically "checkpoint" at and freeze, and then build off of. Capitalism today feels like it's hit the Red Queen Paradox - it goes around and around to keep the money flowing, but with very little actual progress. Indeed, most people seem to feel like the world is getting worse for all that work, and that many of the innovations of the last ~10-15 years are "fixing" things that weren't problems to begin with while creating new problems. And yet because all the substrate is shifting around, even if you don't break something someone else will. Could we go back to a world of redundant interchangeable parts where if somebody breaks something, you just cut them off and use a substitute that works just as well?
Or maybe that's well and truly gone and we're just fated to another dark age. I'm reminded of the Smarter Scrubber documentary that found that basically the whole supply chain was gone and it was impossible to make something useful in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
What level of computing would you checkpoint at? https://saul.pw/mag/computer/
Using your scale? ↑7 or ↑8. That seemed to be the sweet spot in capabilities to me, without getting to the point where engagement eats everything else including productivity and future maintenance.
Using semiconductor process nodes? 45-65nm. That was around the point that Moore's Law broke down. At that point, you could do most of the functionality that we depend upon computers for (eg. GUIs, 3D rendering, networking, basic machine-learning, some speech recognition and text synthesis). It also roughly corresponds to ↑7 or ↑8 on your scale, so it's self-consistent.
Conceptually? I'd like to have multiple checkpoints, so that if the ecosystem gets borked you can roll back further.
Why is your premise that this state of society is intrinsically caused by technological progress? The issues you describe seem to me a product of general economic trends.
Seems like a legend might be leaving the craft due to MICROS~1.