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Quirky computing books

<2022-10-07 Fri>

Forth Fundamentals v2 by McCabe

This is a book from a bygone era when language references were not readily available and even those available were ponderous at best. The book details the words for both fig-FORTH and FORTH-79 and even provides colon definitions for many. This is likely less interesting for even modern Forth programmers, but for Forth-impl dabblers like myself it’s a treasure trove.

<2022-09-02 Fri>

System Design from Provably Correct Constructs by Martin

Continuing on my Margaret Hamilton studies, I thought I’d share this book from 1984 that highlights and builds on her system design principles.

The book was part of a series written by James Martin, who was truly prolific. From starting (and selling) numerous consultancies, giving a Turing Lecture, receiving an honorary Sc.D., and pushing computing forward, his coolest achievement IMO was that he owned his own island.

<2022-08-22 Mon>

Lucid, the Dataflow PL by Wadge & Ashcroft

An interesting lang book in that Lucid is incrementally motivated by, and built from ISWIM into a dataflow model with identity histories. While not for the faint of heart, its incremental flow (ha!) helps motivated readers build gradual understanding.

The book is dense and I suspect one could use it to build an implementation of Lucid, though I’ve never tried myself. The references are a gold mine and you could spend years delving the citations. All lessons learned along the way would be directly applicable to modern systems. The problem currently is that computerists have very little interest nor incentive to dive into the motivations and problems that something like Lucid was attempting to address. Instead, computerists build systems that seemingly work and masochitically maintain and enhance them without a lucid vision in mind.

<2022-08-12 Fri>

Blackboard Systems by Engelmore & Morgan

Earlier in my career I did a lot of work in expert systems and blackboards and this #quirkey book has followed me around ever since. You don’t hear much about blackboard systems these days but for a time I thought that JavaSpaces could be big… alas. The book is chock full of 80s distributed thinking and worth a perusal. I guarantee that some of the problems that you’re encountering in your systems today were pondered over and solved then.

<2022-07-29 Fri>

Designing & Programming Personal Expert Systems by Townsend Feucht

About the quirkiest computing book that you can imagine. It describes the implementation of expert systems in Forth by building a Lisp-like substrate which is then used to build a Prolog that is eventually used to implement the production rules system. It’s a near perfect book for me.

That said, the discussion has many lacunae, making the actual realization of the described system exceedingly difficult.

<2022-07-06 Wed>

Algorithms for RPN Calculators by John Ball

The inimitable @mfikes sent a copy of this astonishing book last week and I’ve been gobsmacked by it ever since. This books presents a boatload of mathematical functions described as series of keystrokes. As a minor calculator dweeb there is much to learn here!

<2022-06-27 Mon>

Electronic Calculators by H. Edward Roberts, then president of MITS, Inc.

In 1974, electronic calculators were the maker culture focal point even after the release of the MITS Altar 8800. For many electronics hobbyists, the calculator was financially and conceptually in reach. This book may have been an invaluable resource for folks trying to build their own.

For calculator enthusiasts this book has a lot to offer. From history, to industry standards of the time, to I/O considerations, there’s a lot to take in. It’s hard to say if one could start from zero and end up with a functioning device – my gut says no.

<2022-06-22 Wed>

Functional Programming: Application and Implementation by Peter Henderson

Inspired by a question on my last book tweet, I thought I’d show another FP offering. This is an original work by Henderson that focuses the discussion around a language called LispKit Lisp, an impl targetting an SECD machine.

The book delves into the implementation of LispKit Lisp and provides a mountain of fine details and source code to facilitate other implementations. It’s a good book but one that’s on the bubble in my personal library. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lispkit_Lisp

One fine note is that I love when these old books had ads for other books in the same thematic line. Prentice Hall at the time was great at this and led me to many a book that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

<2022-06-21 Tue>

Functional Programming and Its Applications by Darlington, Henderson, and Turner

This particular book is on the bubble for my collection as much of what it contains is found scattered throughout other books in my library.

Of particular interest is Henderson’s paper “Purely Functional Operating Systems” which was difficult to find the last I checked.