The best programming language for the end of the world

Coding reminded me of the lawless dystopia in Crazy maxS You make your own rules, subject to the boundaries of context. You can redefine the statement if you are so please. You can rewrite machine code instructions for word. You can even change the words during execution. As words become keywords, you can create a language that is optimized for one goal, packing commands that would otherwise be dozens of lines in just one. “Next, you create your own language,” Leo Brody, author of the textbook First Forth, As it startsHe told me.

A low -quarter level, although key to processing it, has made the programming feel foreign. He uses Postfix, a form of mathematical notation that makes 2 + 1 as 2 1+ and which I found neither intuitive or even really legible. And while most languages ​​allow the memory to be broken and moved around, Forth is based on stack-the data is stored chronologically and are managed on the basis of the last/first place. I continued to encounter bugs, forcing myself to abandon the programming conventions that I considered universal. I found myself trying to speak the language of the machine.

When I sent an email to Dupras to ask for help, he compared using to drive a stick. It is more detailed than C. When the latter defines calling conventions, variable storage and stack management, Forth leaves all this to the programmer. It directly interacts with memory in the same way that C makes, but far outnumbers with accuracy and efficiency. “People are mistaken as a simple language,” says Dupra. “This is a way of interacting with the computer.”

The reason that is more popular is the same reason why most of us are driving automation. The personal computing boom of the 90s caused a mania that the technology corresponds to your palm and facilitates the writing of the code. The languages ​​were abstracted to protect developers from ourselves and somewhere along the way we were lost. Things were blowing in the name of convenience, and in the words of Dupras began “to get out of impenetrate pus at every corner.”

“The way we understand efficiency is so distorted,” says Dupra. Fort is the hair to the Python mower. “If you calculate the number of joules on a grass blade, you will find that the man who grills is more effective,” he says. “When you think about speed, you will see that the hair is more effective.” Forth forces you to be precise and effective for memory-to carefully unhappy your resources, as you would do after the crash. Dupras cuts off its own lawn with hair, obviously. “At some point, you can walk as fast as the mower,” he says.

I started to find my way. Instead of sending bytes to the ether and trusting the system to find out where they are going, as I would like in Python, I used to be responsible for the distribution and release of memory. All I could think of was what was stored, where it was stored and how much space it required. Each row of code suddenly carries weight. I was an immortal Joe, my laptop was my citadel, and memory was my water.

I soon found myself to improve and review my code as a sentence would be executed. Instead of expecting the machine to predict my needs, I tried to think like the machine, to welcome it more than half. And since I had to think twice, all the unnecessary complex abbreviations that remind us to be short in other encoding languages ​​- yagni (you won’t need), kiss (keep it simply, stupid), dry) – make them old.