Then came the walls. The hardware wall rCo a Nokia 5110 LCD brought up over >and over, every blank screen tracing back to a wire, never a word. The lesson: >the human proves the bench, the agent amplifies the design. Then the >configuration wall rCo the code claiming the SPI was a master while the live >register read showed it running as a slave, plus a timing trap that truncated >every byte. Both found by believing the silicon, not the comments.
Produced with the help of AI without which this video would not have been >possible
In article <1175dne$1eoec$1@dont-email.me>,
Terry Porter <techman001@eternal-september.org> wrote:
https://youtu.be/1aGIpoakZTY<SNIP>
Then came the walls. The hardware wall rCo a Nokia 5110 LCD brought up over >>and over, every blank screen tracing back to a wire, never a word. The lesson:
the human proves the bench, the agent amplifies the design. Then the >>configuration wall rCo the code claiming the SPI was a master while the live >>register read showed it running as a slave, plus a timing trap that truncated >>every byte. Both found by believing the silicon, not the comments.
This is to me incomprehensible, bordering to nonsense.
<SNIP>
Produced with the help of AI without which this video would not have been >>possible
As the result is not satisfying, I think you should try harder.
Groetjes Albert
I'm sorry you are not satisfied, Albert, I had hoped the video would would be >informative for those contemplating using embedded Forth with AI.
--Groetjes Albert
Cheers,
Terry
https://youtu.be/1aGIpoakZTY
The third and most honest episode in the story of a technician and his AI partner rCo and the one where the partnership finds its real shape.
It started with a clean win. In Python, Tkinter, databases and glue code, DeepSeek proved invaluable rCo it co-authored Regmon, the register monitor that reads the live STM32 silicon over the debug wire, and LiveCheck, the tool that checks your Forth against the real chip as you type. Two applications
a technician needed for decades. The tooling was a complete, unambiguous success.
Then came the walls. The hardware wall rCo a Nokia 5110 LCD brought up over and over, every blank screen tracing back to a wire, never a word. The lesson:
the human proves the bench, the agent amplifies the design. Then the configuration wall rCo the code claiming the SPI was a master while the live register read showed it running as a slave, plus a timing trap that truncated every byte. Both found by believing the silicon, not the comments.
And then, once every piece of infrastructure was in place rCo the hardware proven, the SQLite databases built, the MCP servers wired rCo the real wall appeared. The one the tooling can't fix: the training data.
DeepSeek is deeply trained in Python and C, but Mecrisp-Stellaris Forth is a niche dialect of a niche language, and the model's training data for it is thin
rCo beginner-level at best. The AI can read registers, build databases and write
MCP servers, but when it comes to actually designing and writing the Forth, it
is honestly a basic Forth beginner.
Terry's conclusion, stated plainly: the agent builds the tooling and answers the design questions, but the human does all the Forth design rCo including the
coding. For now, Terry does Forth bench development alone. No more pair programming in embedded Forth. Not a failure rCo an honest division of labour,
found the hard way, and it works.
This may change as training data grows, or if the C ecosystem shifts. But for now: the tools are there, the design is human, and that's the honest state of AI and Forth on a real bench.
(About the teller: Terry Porter is a 72-year-old electronics technician with 50 years of soldering and circuits, Forth since the 1990s. He dictates his notes and an AI helps him write them up clearly rCo but the bench work itself,
the registers, the LEDs, the clocks, the measurements, is his, done live.)
Produced with the help of AI without which this video would not have been possible
Well, 40 minutes, often watching the very same image for over five
minutes with AI voices blabbering away. I mean: really?
Grok has been the only one so far who wrote a flawless word. Now --
that's child's play. Others have confirmed as well that AI and Forth are
not the best couple to do code generation. So, I guess I'm not the only
one having that experience.
I have to disgree with you here, because in my opinion Forth and AI would be ideal partners in the hardware area, but if only AI had the Forth training data, which it doesn't.What I've heard -- of people using Forth as an AI test bed -- it's the serialization of the data that's fundamentally different from other
Well, 40 minutes, often watching the very same image for over five
minutes with AI voices blabbering away. I mean: really?
But I can tell you what's the limiting factor to AI and Forth. When
there are more than three values to handle, things get tricky -- and AI >generation becomes more prone to error.
BTW, I've gained that number from theoretical analysis and observing the
AI countless times. I gave the AI a simple mission: write me a fast
integer square root routine. Gemini managed it -- but I had to fix
several errors.
... Hardware guys don't program and programmers don't do hardware.
Why ? no one lives long enough to master both disciplines.
On 9/1/2026 1:37 PM, Terry Porter wrote:
... Hardware guys don't program and programmers don't do hardware.
Why ? no one lives long enough to master both disciplines.
Are we supposed to take the bait, or is this just AI attempting to
sow discord?
plonk
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