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Comment by gaze | Hacker News Reader

I really love greenarrays and that entire social circle. It's an older group of folks that bought a historical house in Wyoming and do chip design, programming, everything with their own home-brew minimal set of software. It's an alternative universe of programming. It's almost a software and hardware design religion. I think everyone should know about it and that it's possible to work this way, even if you wouldn't personally want to. You may even find some of their arguments compelling. I love it.

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Has anyone used the greenarray technology for any real world applications? It seems to fit somewhere between an FPGA and a microcontroller, but it doesn't seem that obvious to me what the benefits are, maybe less power than a microcontroller but I can't find any clear cut evidence that is the case for a real world application.

you may find the following presentations in using ga144 entertaining, even if stretched. as Chuck Moore once said (I'm trying to get the ref) Forth is about sharing ideas rather than code. these videos are not pure coding session (even if they have their own share) but a mix of engineering and problem solving. - echolocation like bats - heart monitor - digital image processing - building ga144 controlled robot - low speed usb host

youtube channel of Daniel Kalný https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVMrX6BlNjIeGfX0QcBobGg

hope you enjoy!

> I think everyone should know about it

I would love to! Any further links to the life/work-style of said group?

I think it's more or less a continuation/extension of the ideas of FORTH. You should read their app notes and read the writing of Chuck Moore, Greg Bailey, Jeff Fox, Charley Shattuck, and other FORTH people to understand the ideas. I've also found very friendly to talk to over the phone.

From your original comment I got the impression that there was a Forth collective somewhere on a commune in Wyoming. I was VERY interested in that but will settle for the wisdom of the Forth luminaries.

Here I was wondering how I never heard of the famed Forth collective of Wyoming... Still might visit them sometime just to see what cool things they might be doing. I wonder if they have a discussion venue there.

I just warn you... I think the impulse is to look at this software and think "ok this stuff is kinda rough around the edges. I know, I'm gonna write my own IDE and Compiler and all that in my own language of preference, and use that instead." Do not do this. Learn their tools, their way of doing things, and really try to immerse yourself if you want to learn. Write your own FORTH. It really is a religion with strict opposition to unnecessary abstraction and complexity to a degree that will put most contemporary programmers off balance. If you go in with an open mind, you'll get a lot out of it.

These sound like my people. How does one join?

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