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Re:Thinking Forth: A Language and Philosophy for Solving Pro... by abecedarius on Thursday February 08, 2024 @10:41AM (#39303211)
Anecdote about people at different stages of that learning:

I worked at FORTH, Inc. one summer in the 80s before starting college. They sold a Forth system which they were converting to a new language standard, which (among other things) had changed the canonical booleans from 1-for-true to -1. One day I noticed the trig functions were giving wrong answers.

So I bring up the code with my boss, and it's pretty hard for us to figure out -- compact, no explanation, tables of random-looking numbers. Someone stops by (Dean Sanderson? iirc), we tell him what's up, he looks at the screen, and almost right away he's like "Oh, this is easy! All you need to do is swap the lines in the tables."

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