Churk Moore retired colorforth after w11 update broke it
lobste.rs
lobste.rs
Many if not most of us will be sitting in that chair someday, wondering why our code or our hardware broke for no apparent reason, yet again, and realizing that this time is different because we just don't have enough patience, motivation, or time left to deal with it.
Wish I knew exactly what went wrong. Did they yank DirectDraw out of Win32, or something?
He has a large amount of original low level code where he's the only maintainer, that doesn't work with standard dev tools.
A lot of non-hacker devs would probably have lost interest in, or totally rewritten a project to match modern APIs, long before it was likely to break like that.
Lots of people seem to be offering to help, but that doesn't seem to be what he wants.
He mentions a feeling of fate telling him to move on, hiking, and staying healthy, which seems much more interesting and important.
Also agreed that he isn't asking for help and doesn't appear to want it. Still, this sucks.
But that could just be my lack of understanding of the forth mindset and culture and the benefits it brought him.
Forth obviously did bring him a lot of happiness, but Forth people always seem like they have trouble getting anyone else to understand what they're doing, and it must be kind of isolating to spend so much time on something so few people understand.