overby@plains.UUCP (Glen Overby) (01/06/90)
In article <95.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP> ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie) writes: >F.SERGEANT [Frank] > [...] I still think it is >possible that the CHANGE from $15/year to $30/year may have something to do >with the declining membership, and especially affect our ability to reach the >"younger generation." Of course $30 is not a major barrier to professionals >working in Forth who already understand the value of Forth. But, aren't we >trying to get the ones who aren't sure yet, ... before they become sure of C I dropped my FIG membership when they hiked it's price. That was at least three years ago, if not more. I had been a member for several years, although I never contributed anything, and I found that I was getting less and less out of each issue. Then the price went up. I quit. A few months ago I was filling out my ACM Student Membership application, and I started wondering why FIG doesn't give students a break? ACM certainly gives a big price break. There also was a lot of turmoil over student membership rates a while back: they doubled it from $15 and lost a lot of students! It's now back down to $20. While I'm posting, I'll digress from my Subject add a few comments on Why I think Forth Isn't Popular in the Common Language Marketplace. I think a BIG one is that Forth is not taught at the College level. I wonder how many college graduates (in CS/EE fields) have ever HEARD of Forth? Much less learned it (or had the opportunity to). So why don't academics use Forth? Well, it doesn't *come with* things like data structures (or something that resembles a Pascal record or C struct). Forth also doesn't have some facility for Object Oriented Programming *built in*. Yes, half of OOP is how you actually write the program, but Forth doesn't have anything to FORCE you to do things a certain way. Thats good and bad (the same can be said about C). In fact, I've never seen a good implimentation of data structures in forth (and thats one big reason I don't use Forth anymore). Anybody want to see me stick my foot in my mouth? Show me a good Forth data structure. As for object oriented programming: why is Smalltalk so popular? It seemed to me to be a Forth system with a substantial number of man-years in it. -- Glen Overby <overby@plains.nodak.edu> uunet!plains!overby (UUCP) overby@plains (Bitnet)