bouma@cs.purdue.EDU (William J. Bouma) (03/01/91)
In article <1991Feb27.151829.24417@cbnewse.att.com> cwpjr@cbnewse.att.com (clyde.w.jr.phillips) writes: > >However the "cousins" grew apart more due to application target needs >more than anything else. Yet FORTH seems to have encapsulated more of >"computer science" than C to the degree that C seems to have just recently >addressed some of the things we have grown accustomed to, >namely OOP, rapid prototyping, better factoring, etc. C is much farther advanced than Forth in the realm of Computer Science just on the basis that it has a built in type system. Forth basically "encapsulates" none of CS. It is a hack. Forth and C both leave it up to the user to decide how to factor and to use other good programming techniques. > >This sorta thing may also help get FORTH into CS cources! Forth doesn't address any of the language issues that are discussed in CS courses. What new programming language concept has Forth contributed? Forth is simply an elegant form of programming language implementation, it is nowhere in terms of language theory. I once asked the main language guy here if he knew anything about Forth. To my surprise he had heard of it. A week later he gave a test which I happened to see. One of the questions simply mentioned that Forth was the name of a computer language. I found it amazing and amusing that he had bothered. -- Bill <bouma@cs.purdue.edu>