Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity
Erik Christopher Zeeman 
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Another time when I was concerned about getting credit for some idea I had,
[ Ken Iverson ] said, "Arthur, if it's a really good idea,
you're going to have to shove it down people's throats."
Arthur Whitney : Memories of Ken
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  Abstract for APL2007 Tutorial , Montreal , Oct 21-23
Melding Moore and Iverson : An Open Abstracted APL built in Forth for Intel processors .
The philosophical goal of Charles Moore's FORTH is to define the minimal vocabulary capable of extending itself; Ken Iverson's goal was to define the maximally meaningful notation . The goal of 4th.CoSy is to abstract the structures and syntax of Iverson's APL in modern Forth, free and open down to the Intel ( or future ) primitives, to create a powerful personal computing environment for the everyday business of life.
Those interested in this tutorial should download the current version of 4th.CoSy and have it with them on a laptop. The tutorial will, thru example,
Show Forth's very simple :
- structure : ( dictionary ; dataStack , returnStack ; interpreter )
- syntax : ( read a word ( delimited by whitespace ) , look it up , interpret it )
Show the APL and K informed CoSy structures and vocabulary :
- Everything is either a list ( of pointers ) or something else
- All objects are allocated and reference counted
- A dictionary ( including the root R ) is a list of 2 correlated lists :
- a list of symbols
- a list of their values
- Dictionaries also have a third item : a list of attribute dictionaries for the symbols .
- Indexing is modulo
- Generally verbs work on on lists . Like K , nested lists are reached thru each and flip
- Particular interesting APLish verbs and adverbs
- All objects have a default display , ala K
- Total environment saved in dictionary , ala APL workspace
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| My focus nowdays is the creation of a truly commercial CoSy build from the FORTH up incorporating all I have learned over the decades about simple powerful transparent structure and language . Browse the evolution and history of CoSy to get a sense of my goal .
I've gotten enough code working now in Ron Aaron's Reva to present to FORTH programmers for use as a system of dynamic lists with much of the power of a 0th generation APL . See the Reva Forum for discussion of ongoing work and issues and for documentation and downloads of Reva . I often post uploads of CoSy code there , but a current copy is available at the link below . Here are links to current comentary and documentation of  :
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Past Tense :
| Quantitative Analytics
turn your thoughts into computations
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APL Consulting |
For the most extreme computational tasks , K.CoSy , created in open code in Arthur Whitney`s language K , provides an uniquely productive environment . By its nature , CoSy provides an APL-like workspace environment previously impossible in K which is itself perhaps the fastest and one of the most expressive languages yet created . 
Click K.CoSy for details .
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/ Bob A /
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