dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips) (06/20/91)
Forth is slammed yet again. I suppose one reason why is that there is no
large vocal group to defend it. (Chicken and the egg problem here). If
Forth was popular, it would have such defenders. If it had such defenders,
it would be popular?
+From: new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New)
+Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
+Subject: Write-only languages (was Re: scheme)
+Message-ID: <56569@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
+Date: 18 Jun 91 14:03:35 GMT
+In article <ADRIANHO.91Jun14213017@barkley.berkeley.edu> adrianho@barkley.berkeley.edu (Adrian J Ho) writes:
+>> Scheme seems to share much of its syntax with
+>>Lisp, which tends to be a "write only" language.
+>Hardly true of Scheme/Lisp. The only language that might be truly
+>said to possess this characteristic is APL, and only because of its
+>infernal character set. (Because of this, APL is the one language
+>I've encountered in my life that I've never _wanted_ to master.)
+>Substituting each APL operator with a descriptive name would certainly
+>go a long way towards making it less of a "write-only" language.
+Actually, FORTH is also an extremely write-only language. I also find
+that Lisp is somewhat write-only when complex programs are programmed
+in a funcational style.
+I suspect that languages are write-only more because they lack names for
+local variables or intermediate results that because they have unusual
+characters representing functions. I mean, who would want to write
+out "iota" or "rho" every time you wanted an array? :-) :-)
+Food for thought, so your brain doesn't starve...
+ -- Darren
+--
+--- Darren New --- Grad Student --- CIS --- Univ. of Delaware ---
+----- Network Protocols, Graphics, Programming Languages, FDTs -----
++=+ Nails work better than screws, when both are driven with hammers +=+
---
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