One summer weekend in 1989, Arthur Whitney visited Ken Iverson at Kiln Farm and produced—on one page and in one afternoon—an interpreter fragment on the AT&T 3B1 computer. I studied this interpreter for about a week for its organization and programming style; and on Sunday, August 27, 1989, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, wrote the first line of code that became the implementation described in this document.
Yes! I do! I shall embed it later when I’m on a work horse computer – right now I’m in Ottawa at the Public Services Building at Gilmour & Metcalf on my iPad!
This page shows 5 independent Wat green threads (view source for full Wat code).Each thread has an ID and is defined as a function that loops forever, repeatedly printing its ID, and then sleeping 250ms:["define", ["run-thread", "id"], ["loop", [".", document, "write", ["+", ["string […]
The new Wat is the best, most lightweight way to implement a JavaScript-based programming language I have found so far.Basically, I get away from JS as quickly and painlessly as possible, and start writing the language in itself.So I define a very small set of primitives on the joint foundation of Kernel-like first-class lexical environments and fexprs and d […]
Wat is back! If you'll recall, Wat is my ultra-minimal (~500 lines of JS) interpreter for a Kernel-based language with delimited continuations as well as first-order control, and hygienic macros as well as fexprs.I'm pretty excited by some recent and ongoing changes, which make Wat even smaller and turn it into more of a VM than a full language. Wa […]
Sorry for the silence, good peoples.. I’m wading with Grim Purpose through the mires of book-making. I’ve always had a hard time drawing Babbage on-model, so I finally made a maquette! Some process (I’m using SuperSculpy, for the interested): PROTIP: When sculpting a maquette, FIRST affix the armature to a stand, THEN start sculpting! Because […]
A couple of weeks ago I made a quick impromptu trip up to the town of Macclesfield, just south of Manchester. I went to see this: Now that’s an actual punchycard room! It’s the Paradise Silk Mills, which is more than worth a visit, if you’re nearby (call first though, their opening hours are […]
That looks like the place where
One summer weekend in 1989, Arthur Whitney visited Ken Iverson at Kiln Farm and produced—on one page and in one afternoon—an interpreter fragment on the AT&T 3B1 computer. I studied this interpreter for about a week for its organization and programming style; and on Sunday, August 27, 1989, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, wrote the first line of code that became the implementation described in this document.
– An Implementation of J, Appendix A: Incunabulum.
This is British Columbia, where my extended family on my father’s side all moved together to escape the harsh Alberta winters.
Ironically, my father, like the Iversons, has acquired an Ontario farm.
Ah… 1989, Michael S Montalbano dies and J is born.
I can tell you that the barns in the photo strongly resemble those at Kiln Farm. (Where there are also horses.)
That’s a nice co-incidence. I’m thinking about a photo of Ken holding a J Frisbee on that farm.
Do you mean this one?
Yes! I do! I shall embed it later when I’m on a work horse computer – right now I’m in Ottawa at the Public Services Building at Gilmour & Metcalf on my iPad!
(Photo by Jana Michaud is of Dr Iverson on his farm in Ontario, with a Frisbee bearing the logo of J, APL’s daughter programming language).