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Comment by 7thaccount | Hacker News Reader

It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.

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What would be the best use of his last few years? Sitting in an easy chair by the pool?

Using your last few years to exercise your brain and ward off cognitive decline might be the best way to ensure those last few years are fulfilling and not just marking time before the end.

That's quite a dichotomy here. He can exercise his brain and ward off cognitive decline without working on Colorforth specifically...

Some people have trouble doing meaningless intellectual pursuits like crosswords, sudoku etc.

Working on Colorforth might be the greatest meaning in his life.

He himself said he didn't think it was worth it anymore and that he very rarely codes now. I respect him enough to assume he has some other pursuit more worthy of his attention.

Maybe he's been suffering a cognitive decline that makes coding much less rewarding.

Still the same dichotomy. Who's to say his other pursuits are "meaningless", and the likes of crosswords, sudoku, etc.? For all we know he might have some other projects that he considers more useful.

He does not think working on Colorforth is worth it anymore, so it could actually be detrimental to do so.

I suppose there's meaning in searching for abstract logical truths, but he might have other such pursuits. Or, he might even feel that it's mostly done already and became just another boring software maintenance project.

It's hard to imagine an extremely niche software tool to be the greatest meaning in someone's life.

>> Some people have trouble doing meaningless intellectual pursuits like crosswords, sudoku etc.

My Dad is like this. I'm like this. My son is like this.

Unless we're busy, pushing ourselves to build something, fix something or just outside doing something we don't feel the reward.

My Dad told his motto, "A rolling rock gathers no moss - until it finally stops rolling." He told me that in his 50's - he's in his 80's still out in the garage refinishing old furniture and giving it away. The drive the man has just never burns out.

Yeah! I can definitely see myself doing that. I told family and friends that my ideal way of death is a quick death by the computer when I'm over 80 working on some projects. I just have to move forward in some direction.

Perhaps he has chosen the best use of his last few years to his own satisfaction, and doesn't feel the need to share every last detail about himself on the internet.

He specifically mentions hiking and staying healthy, I'd imagine he's not going to stop using his brain completely.

> What would be the best use of his last few years? Sitting in an easy chair by the pool?

That's completely up to him, and if that's what he wants to do, then that's the best use. No one can say what is best for anyone else.

Isn't that part of the Forth mantra though, to be written to the lowest level possible, eschewing portability, interoperability, hard coding fonts, etc., to achieve the simplest, most minimal implementation possible?

https://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm

must. not. go. too. deep. into. forth. rabbithole.

s" must" . s" not" . s" go" . s" too" . s" deep" . s" into" . s" forth" . s" rabbithole" .

When you go down the rabbit hole in Forth, it is easy to pop back out.

Actually it is-

    s" rabbithole" .s" forth" .s" into" .s" deep" .s" too" .s" go" .s" not" .s" must" .

    $ gforth
    Gforth 0.7.3, Copyright (C) 1995-2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    Gforth comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `license'
    Type `bye' to exit
    s" rabbithole" .s" forth" .s" into" .s" deep" .s" too" .s" go" .s" not" .s" must" . 
    :1: Undefined word
    s" rabbithole" >>>.s"<<< forth" .s" into" .s" deep" .s" too" .s" go" .s" not" .s" must" .
    Backtrace:
    $7F53D6EF5A68 throw 
    $7F53D6F0BDB0 no.extensions 
    $7F53D6EF5D28 interpreter-notfound1                                           ::
    : ws s" rabbithole " s" forth " s" into " s" deep " s" too " s" go " s" not "  compiled
    s" must " 8 0 do type loop ;  ok
    ws must not go too deep into forth rabbithole  ok

Forth is generally all about minimalism as I understand it, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was just saying the man obviously wants to focus on something else at this stage of his life and that is perfectly okay. I think he might port to Raspberry Pi if he was a few years younger, but he pointed out that he didn't think it was worth it at this point.

>>He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life.

Know quite a few elderly men, were moving mountains until retirement, then at one age they wanted to simply step back and relax. It was a cognitive downhill from there on. Also there is something strange about men sitting at home doing nothing. For some reasons families start hating as little as a sentence from them. You have to sit quiet for most of your life. Which honestly speaking is nothing short of a punishment, because you are actually expected to behave like furniture, or at best like a vegetable.

Even other wise I do see men who retired early not having all that a great time sitting at home and doing nothing.

Without a purpose, you won't enjoy living life much.

Yep, in China there was a research that says retirement is a major killer for certain elder people (forgot the details but most likely just statistics of the number of years between retirement and death). I don’t know. I’d like to find a calling and die working on it.

if he's not going to maintain it anymore can't he at least open source it?

It's public domain, sort of.

" Updated 2002 September Philosophy

My attitude about software is that it expresses ideas that cannot be owned. Attempting to assert ownership is undesirable and impossible.

So, although colorForth is infinitely valuable, I place it in the Public Domain to make it freely available to anyone for any purpose. There is plenty of money to be made by porting code, programming applications and teaching.

I am having a fine time using colorForth. I won't spend much time promoting it. This site is my attempt to gauge the market. I will rigidly control the version I use."

But when you go to the downloads you see this:

"Download You can download colorForth thanks to UltraTechnology.

Downloads are still available. But note that COLOR.COM can only run under DOS - not Windows. As you can see above, it's 9 years old and I no longer know how to run it. The current version is available at GreenArrays

    COLOR.COM Jul31
    boot.asm, floppy source
    gen.asm, generic graphics source
    color.asm, kernel source

This is the exact version I'm using, limited only in the amount of source code provided. It's a 63KB .COM program. You're welcome to use it as you please. But it's a powerful tool, so please be careful."

See https://colorforth.github.io/

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