ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) (01/06/90)
Date: 01-03-90 (10:25) Number: 1525 (Echo) To: GARY-S Refer#: 1522 From: STEVE PALINCSAR Read: NO Subj: BASICS OF THE FORTH LANGU Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I'm really sorry this message got truncated. It was off to a very interesting start. I certainly agree that there's been a lot of discussion here in the past that seemed to tend toward making forth look like C (or Modula or whatever other language the person leaving the message either new & liked, or was taught in school was the One True Way to Write a Language). There have even been some recent defections by well known forth-wrights of the past, such as Wil Baden, who have essentially said forth is obsolete because we're no longer in an era of scarce machine resources. Whether this is correct or not is I think open to debate. To say forth's day is past assumes it ever had a day, and claims that its usefulness & use is essentially over. I'm not sure of either of those points. I don't work in the industry, and I'm not at all sure whether use of forth was ever widespread. I can see many reasons why it might not fit well into a large organization staffed with low-skilled people. Let's face it: you can't check the validity of a piece of forth code by casual inspection, as perhaps you can with some other languages. Furthermore, aside from immediately locking the machine (admittedly, that does get your attention!) forth does nothing to protect you from mistakes, or even to inform you of them. That seems to be a big deal in the literature -- they describe the "exhilaration of programming without a safety net" as being part of the seductiveness of C, after all -- and I guess some folks find it really important. Forth's "test it, crash & burn, reboot, try it again" approach to error detection might not fit such an environment. But then, did it ever? I don't think this is where we ought to look if we're looking for strengths for the language. On the other hand, any of us who have used it more than casually & continue to do so clearly have found things of considerable value in the language. Some of those things are relatively unique, greatly useful, and in all liklihood will continue to be so in the future. I for one am getting a wee bit tired of the "forth is dead" weeping that's been coming thru from the Unix nets. I'm not ready to bury it. Not to say that I think forth will ever put any of the other languages out of business, either -- but who said it had to? Forth, I'm sure, will never in a million years ever become as ubiquitous as either C or Fortran. To me that's no tragedy. ----- 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) (01/07/90)
Date: 01-06-90 (04:34) Number: 1539 (Echo) To: STEVE PALINCSAR Refer#: 1525 From: ARCHIE WARNOCK Read: NO Subj: BASICS OF THE FORTH LANGU Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE SP>I for one am getting a wee bit tired of the "forth is dead" weeping SP>that's been coming thru from the Unix nets. I'm not ready to bury it. SP>Not to say that I think forth will ever put any of the other languages SP>out of business, either -- but who said it had to? Forth, I'm sure, SP>will never in a million years ever become as ubiquitous as either C or SP>Fortran. To me that's no tragedy. Well said, my friend. Frankly, I really don't care if anyone else uses Forth. As Ray Duncan (I think) said, if no one else uses it, it just remains my advantage. In the past couple of years, I've found that I don't really care if it gets "popular" or even "standardized." I'll use it anyway, whenever it's the best tool for the job. And it frequently is! --- ~ EZ 1.22 ~ We don't know the ********* words! ----- 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'