[OT] Eternal programming

[Bengt Richter]

On Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:55:56 -0700, "John Roth"
<johnroth at ameritech.net> wrote:
>I don't see why it couldn't be of much more utility. The big problem is
>performance, since you're talking about a two level interpreter. The last
>time I saw anything quite that slow was a /360 running a 1410 emulator
>running a 650 simulator.
I am getting the impression there's a lot of OF's around here ;-)
I remember when you could go to any IBM office and get an armload
of system and programming manuals just for the asking. The 650 manual
was the first computer manual I ever looked at ;-)

>
>Very interesting idea. The trouble is, I can't see it being really small.
>Making it cleanly extensible seems to require some of the features that
>support extendability, such as namespaces (Forth dictionaries), etc.
>
>Anyone want to work on it - either technically or politically?
Well, the nuclear waste problem is probably the most eternal thing
we've managed to create yet, so there ought to be application
for 'Eternal' somehow with that ;-/

Actually, I think there are people very concerned about the viability
of digital archives from the point of view of survivability of
the access methods and devices. I'd bet the Library of Congress has
folks worrying about this.

Maybe with genetic engineering we can design something as persistent
as a cockroach with 'Eternal' stored in its DNA. Come to think of it,
maybe SETI is looking in the wrong place for messages ;-)