files@willett.UUCP (Mailed File Repository) (12/20/89)
Message 21 Tue Dec 19, 1989
W.BADEN1 [Wil] at 21:36 PST
> "It is no longer the purpose of programs to instruct our machines, it > is
the purpose of machines to execute our programs". Edsger W. Dijkstra. > ....
Computing has gone far since [1980]. Forth hasn't.
I am in sympathy with the sentiments expressed by the writer. (He works at the
place where I do most of my consulting.)
The line between "Programs that Instruct machines" and "Machines that Execute
programs" is arbitrary, and every programming language must accommodate both
objectives. Forth leans toward the former. I do not criticize Forth for this
-- that's what Forth is for.
Forth will always have a place in embedded systems, and I think it has a
bright future in Forth engines.
I am not engaged with either of these specialties. This is from lack of
opportunity, not lack of interest.
When I first became involved with Forth, I had 64K of memory, two 140K floppy
drives, and a text-only Epson printer. In total this cost about $2400.
(Think what you can do for half of that today.) Now I have 4 megabytes of
memory, two 800K floppy drives, a 60 megabyte harddisk, and an Imagewriter.
This cost less than $2800.
Forth's greatest power is its Productivity. With my early system Forth was
the best way to acquire productivity. With my present system there are other
easier-to-use, easier-to-learn, and more powerful ways to achieve
productivity.
Procedamus in pace. Wil.
------------GEnie@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (12/21/89)
To: KARL BROWN Refer#: NONE From: ZAFAR ESSAK Read: NO Subj: HELLO Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Hi Karl, It was good seeing you again 2 weeks ago at the BC-FIG chapter meeting. Conrad and Thorin must be quite grown from when we saw you all last. And how is Eleanor? A pretty resiliant lady - still living with all those BERTs. She must be thankful most of them are in pieces and not all talking back. We'd love to get together with you and will work to make that happen after the Christmas Craze. Dave's demo of BERT at the FIG chapter was fun. He had combined BERT with F-PC and Dennis Ruffer's UARTS stuff added his own stuff and even figured out how to make BERT say "Welcome to B.C. Fig" and he made it seem so easy. Now that's an example of USING Forth. The problem with the "steep learning curve in Forth" is when people want to decipher all the innards of Forth. And since it's almost all in Forth they try to do that from the beginning. Whoever heard of learning to drive by taking the car apart first? And if this analogy seems so far fetched I have yet to hear anyone using BASIC discussing how BASIC works. And after they had given up on BASIC and moved to assembler describe adding features to the assembler. It's good to see you on the board to remind those of us who like software and shy away from the wire and solder that there is a bridge between the two. --- * Via Qwikmail 2.01 NET/Mail : British Columbia Forth Board - Burnaby BC - (604)434-5886 ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated program. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (01/05/90)
Category 2, Topic 11 Message 29 Fri Dec 22, 1989 R.BERKEY [Robert] at 05:42 PST To: Jax Woehr >>The VENDORS have made almost zero contribution to the evolution >>of language standards but appear to have been dragged every step >>of the way. JAX> Not true... Then I don't know what you mean by standards. I'd say only Forth, Inc. of the group you mention have been contributors to the evolution of standards. They sponsored the 1978 and 1979 Catalina FST meetings, and have always been regular contributors of proposals. Yet, in terms of actually offering standard implementations, "dragged" seems quite to the point. Before the 1979 meeting they reportedly put their name on a piece of paper that said that they would offer 1979 standard implementations coequal to other offerings... An important exception: Starting Forth Editions 1 and 2, which document respectively Forth-79 and Forth-83 (and the differences between those and polyForth). ----- This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated program. Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (01/05/90)
Category 2, Topic 11
Message 43 Sat Dec 30, 1989
F.SERGEANT [Frank] at 15:46 CST
Steve Rudek writes
> Surely you know the difference between absolute numbers and market > share?
What you're saying here and in a previous message is that > Forth is doing
very well now that it has admitted defeat as a > general language and
RETREATED to the niche it came from -- > instrument control. I sure wouldn't
count that as
First, I reckon Forth is quite different from a country that has a central
government that can admit defeat. As an (associated, communicative,
goodwilled) anarchy every single Forth programmer would have to be defeated
individually. No ONE speaks for us all, not even fig.
Now, let's take up market share. I had the pleasure of hearing a Radio
Shack executive talk at a breakfast in Fort Worth in 1983 or 1984. He said
they don't want market share; they want profitability. I remember those words
to this day. At the time he was very happy to let TI & Commodore have the
market share (I understand they were losing money) while Radio Shack just had
profit.
-- Frank
-----
This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated program.
Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) (01/09/90)
ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) wrote:
> Category 2, Topic 11
Please, gateway person - can you translate these numbers into English for
us on Usenet? Or post a description of the thesaurus structure they refer
to?
--
Jack Campin * Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND. 041 339 8855 x6044 wk 041 556 1878 ho
INTERNET: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk USENET: jack@glasgow.uucp
JANET: jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs PLINGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack