Subject:
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pbForth is fun!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 22 Jan 2001 18:01:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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1220 times
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I had approached pbForth two or three times in the past, always failing to
manage what I thought was a steep learning curve. The truth is I probably
was too lazy to put the necessary attention into it, or I was in a hurry to
program my robots to show at some legofest and decided to use some tool I
was already productive with.
Ralph's introduction to pbForth in the excellent book "Extreme Mindstorms"
made me realise I missed the key point: why should I learn pbForth? After
all I don't need it for my job, I don't need it to live, I even don't need
it to program my RCX. The answer is simple: for fun. Just for the pleasure
to challenge my mind with a "different" thing.
So during a quite Sunday I took my time and started again from scratch,
trying to enter Forth philosophy. It wasn't so hard, after all, and indeed
was a lot of fun. I like the way you're always in touch with the brick, the
way you build your system layer after layer, the way you can easily test and
debug your words while you create them. You can have a very basic group of
words for all the common system management functions (sensors, motors,
sound.), another group for robots of a specific class (eg differential
drive), a third one for common functions (light seeking, line following) and
in your final code you add just a few words to link everything together for
your specific bot.
I must add I realised pbForth is very fast and absolutely solid. Ralph put a
great effort into it and it shows.
To give myself a goal I then decided to use pbForth to program a new bot for
the incoming ItLUG robotic contest, a mini-sumo tournament that happened
last Saturday in Milan. I did it, and the robot behave how it was designed
to. If it didn't win it was not pbForth fault :-)
I shouldn't explain Forth benefits to those who usually post in the
.rcx.pbforth newsgroup: they already know them better than I do. But I hope
that my experience can make somebody else curious enough to give pbForth a
chance.
Ciao
Mario
Lego web page: http://www.geocities.com/mario.ferrari/lego.html
LUGNET member page: http://www.lugnet.com/people/members/?m=22
Proud member of ItLUG: http://www.itlug.org
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