wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (09/22/90)
> This still leaves the question of whether it is more appealing to >newcomers to have Forth written in Forth or in assembler. There is no one answer. It depends on the newcomer. One problem with assembly language is that there are a lot of machines these days which do not come with an assembler. You can buy assemblers for these machines, but they aren't necessarily compatible with one another. Another problem is that there are a lot of people that do not know assembly language. A third problem is that assembly language is not portable across machines, and if the entire kernel is written in assembler, porting to a new machine involves rewriting the whole thing, not just the fundamental code words. For a *lot* of newcomers, it is more appealing to have Forth written in C! I sell quite a few copies of C Forth 83 into this market. Personally, I think that typing in an assembly listing is an utter waste of time. It was okay back in FIG Forth days, when affordable computers were wimpy and pretty much brain dead, and programmers were studly pioneers. That situation was basically a glitch on the time line of history. Unfortunately, a lot of Forth "culture" got "locked in" to that very temporary set of tradeoffs. Mitch
jax@well.sf.ca.us (Jack J. Woehr) (09/23/90)
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes: >> This still leaves the question of whether it is more appealing to >>newcomers to have Forth written in Forth or in assembler. >There is no one answer. It depends on the newcomer. Quite true. It also depends on what the author was trying to accomplish. >For a *lot* of newcomers, it is more appealing to have Forth written in C! >I sell quite a few copies of C Forth 83 into this market. And a very pretty Forth it be, up and running on a Pyramid under OSx as of two days ago, BTW. >Personally, I think that typing in an assembly listing is an utter waste >of time. Well, foof! Currently working on ANS Forth for Amiga, in CAPE ASM. Allows me to think through everything down to the core. Excellent exercise, with a bit of luck showable at Detroit. >Unfortunately, a lot of Forth "culture" got "locked in" to that very >temporary set of tradeoffs. Fortunately, Forth culture got locked in to the lonely Zen of the ecletic programming environment we call Forth. To accept assembly Forths is heresy. To condemn assembly Forths is heresy. Follow the Tao ... :-) =jax=
wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (09/25/90)
> >Personally, I think that typing in an assembly listing is an utter waste > >of time. > Well, foof! Currently working on ANS Forth for Amiga, in > CAPE ASM. Allows me to think through everything down to the core. Oops, I think we are talking about different things here. I have no objection to writing Forth kernels in assembler. I just think that *distributing* them as paper assembly listings is a waste of time. This shouldn't be too controversial; nowadays, nearly everybody can either read DOS floppies or knows someone who can, and failing that, file transfer via RS-232 is nearly universal. Metacompiled Forth/assembler is the implementation technique that I use the most. Mitch