Abundance is a Forth-inspired programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 for DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

, created by Roedy Green

Roedy Green

Roedy Green is a Canadian programmer, independent computer consultant, and activist...

.

History

Roedy Green

Roedy Green

Roedy Green is a Canadian programmer, independent computer consultant, and activist...

 implemented Abundance in 1981 as a platform for data entry and management

Data management

Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource.- Overview :The official definition provided by DAMA International, the professional organization for those in the data management profession, is: "Data Resource Management is the development and execution...

, as part of the volunteer work he was doing for The Hunger Project

The Hunger Project

The Hunger Project is a 501 non-profit charitable organization incorporated in the state of California.The Hunger Project describes itself as an organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger...

 in Canada.

The name is a reference to the goal of "serving charities working to create an Abundance of food water and shelter on the planet", and was coined by Esther Palivoda. (Roedy originally planned to call it "Enough".)

Jaunting

One unconventional feature of Abundance is the use of continuation

Continuation

In computer science and programming, a continuation is an abstract representation of the control state of a computer program. A continuation reifies the program control state, i.e...

s to implement data entry form navigation, in a process known as "jaunting". Jaunting works by saving a continuation for every data field that the user enters, and restoring the associated continuation when a particular field needs to be made active.

This approach allows complicated data validation rules to be written in a simple linear style, while allowing the user to jump between fields in a non-linear fashion.

Trivia

• NASA
  NASA
  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
  
  's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...
  
  used parts of Abundance in their unmanned spacecraft control software.