Using PostScript as a General Purpose Computing Language

RapidRonnie · 2006-03-09T02:08:00+00:00

A total nonstarter as far as I can tell. Discounting the primary problem for ALL programmers (H-1B predationand consequent employer spoilage) there is absolutely no market forGeneral Purpose PostScript Programmers. I have never seen an ad for oneyet. I have never seen this skill set even mentioned in anyadvertisement for Programmers in my life. Considering that PostScript is a derivative of Forth, you wouldconsider there would be some crossover there. Unfortunately, there isno substantial demand for Forthwrights either. It's true some basementhacker types really like Forth for embedded development.Unfortunately, most of them have to flip burgers, work at Walmart, ordeal in surplus electrojunk for a living. I have enough esoterichobbies as it is. The other problem is the lack of toolsets and working environments forwriting PostScript. GNU Ghostscript works on Unix environments, I'mtold. But again that's a pretty obscure place to have to work. Using alaser printer as a computer and throwing away the output, thoughutterly stupid on a colossal scale, can be done. Even that is becomingtougher as the old battleaxe printers die and become unreplaceable. Thelast bastion for true Adobe PostScript is on some enterprise level(read: as big as an old Xerox office copier, in fact, that's what manyprimarily are) printers having to exist in mixed Windows/Unixenvironments. (Since 95% of code is actually generated on laptopstoday-the reason they make laptops with bizarre RISC architectures thatare dead on the desktop-carrying a 500 lb printer in your notebook bagseems a bizarre requirement.) Unix, Unix, Unix. I hate Unix, you say. Where else is PostScriptused? Well, nowhere. Microsoft doesn't particularly love PostScript,Adobe being Mussolini to Steve Jobs' Apple which is, you know, that guyGodwin was bitching about. If you are a aficionado of learning obscure and pedantic languagesPostScript is up there with IBM mainframe JCL, TeX, and some of thebizarrer alternatives to perl or...

Mar 09, 2006 81 Replies

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Don Lancaster 20 years ago

In its REPLICATE mode, an ASR-33 could be programmed to make copies of its own tape input.

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Tim Shoppa 20 years ago

The main electric motor, and a cam-clutch, and a lot of little pawls and a distributor and...

Tim.

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