Forth like interpreter

[William Tanksley]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2000 03:45:05 GMT, Darrell wrote:
>[William Tanksley]

>> >I use Forth to describe the family of TIL's that can evolve quickly
>> >because
>> >they are expressed as a single strand of RNA. Maybe I need another term
>> >for them.

>> I'm not offended by that characterization -- in fact, I'd like a link so I
>> can read more about your work.  I assume that you're working on genetic
>> algorithms?

>I am interested in genetic algorithms and keep looking for an opportunity to
>use one. My reference to RNA was mostly for humor, with some truth mixed in.
>Oddly the simplicity of TIL's leads to mutation much the same as RNA mutates
>more easily than DNA.

Oh well -- a while back I had run into some research on genetic algorithms
which used "a Forth-like language" instead of the typical Scheme-like
language.  The reasercher claimed some interesting results, but I lost the
link and haven't seen it since.  And since I'm a Forth bigot, I'm
naturally curious.

It's interesting that for all the time Lisp people spend talking about
metaprogramming (programs which write programs) the most commonly used
metaprogrammed language isn't even vaguely similar to Lisp.  (Anybody
care to guess?)

>> There's a much more lucid description of the characteristics of
>> concatenative languages at
>> http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/philosophy/phimvt/j00syn.html.

>Thanks for the link. I apreciate all the help I can get to understand
>Christian Tismer when he says things like "no Forth, but TIL".

TIL isn't quite a fair description either -- not all Forths are threaded,
and I even worked with one once which wasn't interactive (although I
didn't stay with it for long).  The big thing about Forth, according to
its inventor, is "2 stacks and ICE" (Interpret, Compile, Execute).  By
that definition, Joy isn't even close to Forth -- but I think that's
pretty obvious just by looking at it.

>--Darrell

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley