mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (12/13/84)
Norman Diamond writes: >You forgot those of us who can't stand forth, and those of us who >wonder why a new 50's language is invented in the 70's and still >promoted in the 80's. How do I anti-honk? Well, well. Just this past week a seminar group here was discussing some language features and philosophy, and my, my, Forth was brought up as an embodiment of principles some felt were desirable. Features, I might add, that are found in very few languages (such as COMPLETE control over data types). As the story has been told to me, I have no trouble understanding why Moore created the language. For an 8-bit micro, there simply were no civilized languages with sufficient power (unless you think 8080 assembly is civilized :-)); there are hardly any now. I'll certainly agree that it is one of the most write-only languages since APL. Nevertheless, it embodies principles which the ADA-ites and their Design-the-Next-Great-Language kin have chosen to ignore. I suspect that the I/O package for most FORTRANs (dare I mention PL/I?) is considerably larger than the Forth COMPILER would be on the same machine. "Forth-- Stay to here is that language a" [Now pop that off your stack] Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (12/13/84)
Please -- no more non-jokes about forth to net.jokes! If you follow up a
joke posted to net.jokes with a non-joke, remember to edit the "Newsgroups:"
line. Thanks.
--- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddlendiamond@watdaisy.UUCP (Norman Diamond) (12/14/84)
Charley Wingate writes: > For an 8-bit micro, there simply were no civilized languages with sufficient > power (unless you think 8080 assembly is civilized :-)); there are hardly any > now. > ... > I suspect that the I/O package for most FORTRANs (dare I mention PL/I?) is > considerably larger than the Forth COMPILER would be on the same machine. > ... > "Forth-- Stay to here is that language a" There are people who regard PL/M as a civilized language. (I am not one.) Of course, I haven't met a civilized language yet, though some languages incorporate some civilized features. Also don't forget, Fortran I/O packages are often larger than even Fortran compilers. Of course, any language that doesn't offer run-time support will not require its libraries to be as large as its compilers. But of course, Forth is here to stay, as are Fortran and PL/I and APL and Cobol and Basic (and now to move on to those that are only 75% flawed) C and Pascal and Ada. This discussion no longer seems appropriate for net.jokes ... all I wished to do in my previous submission was to anti-honk, and perhaps we should move to net.jokes.d ... but first, one observation: Why will no-one consider the possibility of using 10-year-old hardware -- they always insist on using the latest, 5-year-old hardware -- but they are perfectly happy using languages that are 20 years old? -- Norman Diamond UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!watdaisy!ndiamond CSNET: ndiamond%watdaisy@waterloo.csnet ARPA: ndiamond%watdaisy%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa "Opinions are those of the keyboard, and do not reflect on me or higher-ups."
wmb@sun.uucp (Mitch Bradley) (12/17/84)
> Why will no-one consider the possibility of using 10-year-old hardware -- > they always insist on using the latest, 5-year-old hardware -- but they are > perfectly happy using languages that are 20 years old? I don't want to cause a big argument about this, but I do want to voice a contrary opinion. Personally, I like Forth, and frequently chose to use it in preference to C. And please, don't think I don't know C well enough; I used C extensively for 3 years *before* I learned Forth, and vigorously promoted the use of C at the company I worked at before Sun. Forth is interactive and extensible, two features that I like very much, and which are lacking from C. I find that I can write and debug non-trivial programs much faster in Forth than in C, precisely because it is interactive. I don't like the Forth "screen" concept (source code is usually kept in 16 line x 64 column format), so I edit my source code in normal Unix files with Emacs. As a point of information, Forth is not 20 years old. It was developed about the same time as C. Lisp, however, is 20 years old, and it is actively being used as the language of choice by much of the AI community, who like to think of themselves as the cutting edge of computer science. So, I would claim that newer is not necessarily better, regardless of the fact the Forth isn't old anyway. Cheers, Mitch Bradley (honk, honk)
cdshaw@watmath.UUCP (12/19/84)
Actually, Moore first developed Forth in the sixties on an IBM 360 or 1400 or something. Seems he was sick of barftran.
ron@celerity.UUCP (Ron McDaniels) (12/20/84)
I wish you had the good taste to rot your disgusting opinion of forth!
leach@fortune.UUCP (Geoffrey Leach) (01/03/85)
Forth was first developed in 1967 on an IBM 1130 with a 2250 display. It was based on ideas developed by Moore while working a SLAC.