stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) (11/21/89)
Several weeks ago I made a posting asking for guidance in getting a high-quality Forth to run on a 386 Xenix/Unix. My message was almost totally ignored. I suppose I could just let my imagination manufacture reasons as to why I was ignored, but that doesn't seem a very productive thing to do. So, I've decided to make a followup posting -- I think it is *important* to get a high quality Forth running in a 386 Unix environment; whether you work with and like the Intel 80386 processor or not, it is my understanding the the current boom in Unix acceptance owes at least as much to the availability of cheap 386 machines as it does to any other single factor. I think it would further both Unix and Forth to have a serious alternative to 'C' on 386 Unix machines *specifically*. I admit that a Forth on 386 Unix would benefit me personally, of course -- 386 Unix is where I expect to spend the next 5 to 10 years and I guess I'm about the only programmer in the world who (*blush*) thinks 'C' is overused and overrated. My original posting asked how to approach porting an 8088 Forth from MS-DOS to Unix/Xenix. It would be better, of course, to get a Forth written specifically for a 386 processor, but I figured that could be dealt with later if the ported Forth included a metacompiler and/or full source. And there are a number of fairly robust, public-domain Forth's available for the 8088 architecture which should be able to run under Unix/Xenix once the system calls and binary-header are changed. I also acknowledged that I don't know squat about implementing/porting Forth although for some perverse reason I am strongly attracted to the language. I said all that and I got . . . silence. Doesn't anyone knowledgeable who reads this group share my interest in getting F83 or F-PC or some other good Forth to run on a 386 Unix?? Did my message fail to get widely distributed to the net? Did I say something so "silly" or boring in my posting that everyone immediately pressed "n"? Maybe none of the serious Forth people who follow this group work on 386 Unix machines? I suppose you might be divided between those who read usenet but only work on MS-DOS and those who do use Unix but have high end Sun workstations and VAX minicomputers?? I've exchanged email with a couple of people who have Unix based Forths written in C and perhaps something will come from one of those leads. But I'm concerned that the Forth I use not be a second-rate citizen under Unix; it will need to support system calls and curses, at a minimum, and it *must* be f-a-s-t enough so developed applications can compete seriously with programs coded in C. That doesn't mean the Forth programs have to be as fast as equivalent C programs, but they've got to be close--not an order of magnitude slower. Doesn't that almost necessitate assembly language support for new primatives? In a recent posting, sabbagh@csd27.nyu.edu (Hadil G. Sabbagh) said: >To add to the "Forth written in C debate" I wish to point out that, >in UNIX, it is not _possible_ to write Forth (in either C _or_ >assembler !!!) that can allow the user to write definitions in the >native machine language (ie.e., assembler). THis is because the >the "text space" (the segment of memory that holds the executable >code image) is defined to be _read-only_. There may be a way >around this if you achieved a sufficiently high level of UNIX wizardry >and have the right priviledges :-). Is he correct? That would be terrible. Some other quick questions before I end this posting: (1) I just received the FIG catalog. They don't have a 386 Forth advertised but they do have F-PC available. I've never seen it and I'm wondering if *complete* assembly source is available and if it might be a better choice for porting to Unix than is F83? (2) I've failed in all attempts to correspond with either the author of the Forth 'compiler' (CFORTH) or the maintainer of the Forth archive (I wanted to get the source listing of the minimal Forth kernel and the article describing the different mechanisms for Forth threading). I guess that is the problem with crossing over from uucp (what I have access to) and internet? Isn't there any reliable gateway for handling that transition through which I could mail my letters? Thanks for your attention. -- {pacbell!sactoh0! OR ucdavis!csusac!}tree!stever
usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) (11/22/89)
From article <1989Nov20.211822.1015@tree.uucp>, by stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek): > Several weeks ago I made a posting asking for guidance in getting a > high-quality Forth to run on a 386 Xenix/Unix. My message was almost > totally ignored. I suppose I could just let my imagination manufacture > reasons as to why I was ignored, but that doesn't seem a very productive > thing to do. I never replied to the original posting because I am still very much a novice Forther. However, I did expect someone to post a reply similar to: Such a beastie does already exist in Mitch Bradley's C-Forth which is claimed to run under SCO Xenix 386. It is available from Mitch for $50. Disclaimer: I've only heard of Mitch's product. I have not gotten to the point in Forth where I'm willing to pay for a Forth. I've been using F-PC under DOS to learn. If it does turn out that Mitch's C-Forth is not what you want and still want to make one of your own, I am willing to act as a beta tester and provide any possible UNIX, C, or 80x86 assembly support I can. I'm good at all of the above but don't know enough Forth yet to try and implement one. I can be contacted at one of the addresses below: j |%|John Lawitzke, Dale Computer Corp., R&D |%|UUCP: uunet!frith!dale1!jhl Work |%| uunet!frith!dale1!ipecac!jhl Home Inquiring minds just wondering. |%|Internet: jhl@frith.egr.msu.edu
ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik) (11/23/89)
stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: > I said all that and I got . . . silence. Doesn't anyone knowledgeable who > reads this group share my interest in getting F83 or F-PC or some other > good Forth to run on a 386 Unix?? Did my message fail to get widely > distributed to the net? Did I say something so "silly" or boring in my > posting that everyone immediately pressed "n"? Maybe none of the serious Forth > people who follow this group work on 386 Unix machines? I suppose you might > be divided between those who read usenet but only work on MS-DOS and those > who do use Unix but have high end Sun workstations and VAX minicomputers?? People rarely post a message to the net saying "I don't know the answer to the question asked by Steve Rudek" Somehow when we post to this newsgroup we believe that we are addressing the entire Forth community. Periodically I post a call for people who are involved in teaching Forth and are interested in education -- and I get silence too. There are people involved in teaching Forth, they just aren't on USENET. [Actually there are only about 10 people on comp.lang.forth (even this is a bit misleading since Tom Almy, Bill Bouma, Mitch Bradley, and John Wavrik are really pseudonyms for one person who periodically writes a series of heated exchanges to stir things up)] P.S. I know of at least one person who responded to you by email. John J Wavrik jjwavrik@ucsd.edu Dept of Math C-012 Univ of Calif - San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093
usenet@cps3xx.UUCP (Usenet file owner) (11/23/89)
From article <5317@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, by ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik): $ [Actually there are only about 10 people on comp.lang.forth (even this is a $ bit misleading since Tom Almy, Bill Bouma, Mitch Bradley, and John Wavrik are $ really pseudonyms for one person who periodically writes a series of heated $ exchanges to stir things up)] I think I'd qualify that as 10 expert Forthers in the group and a bunch of us novices.... j |%|John Lawitzke, Dale Computer Corp., R&D |%|UUCP: uunet!frith!dale1!jhl Work |%| uunet!frith!ipecac!jhl Home Inquiring minds just wondering. |%|Internet: jhl@frith.egr.msu.edu
gorpong@ping.UUCP (Gordon C. Galligher) (11/28/89)
In article <5317@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik) writes: > > >[Actually there are only about 10 people on comp.lang.forth (even this is a >bit misleading since Tom Almy, Bill Bouma, Mitch Bradley, and John Wavrik are >really pseudonyms for one person who periodically writes a series of heated >exchanges to stir things up)] Make that 11. I read it, but since I don't even know FORTH enough to be dangerous I don't dare post. -- Gordon. -- ...!uunet!telxon!ping!gorpong
toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) (11/29/89)
In article <5317@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik) writes: >stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: >> I said all that and I got . . . silence. Doesn't anyone knowledgeable who >> reads this group share my interest in getting F83 or F-PC or some other >> good Forth to run on a 386 Unix?? Steve, We (my group at Tektronix) has contracted to get a 386 UNIX with X Windows support. Our problem has been to get a working Unix system to send to the contractor! The final system should be commercially available (not through us) but it won't be Public Domain. Why is it that people are willing to pay good money for other languages, but expect to get good Forths for free? Why did I decide to make a few bucks (and *very* few) with Forth when I could have made it rich with a "politically correct" language used by people with $money$? >[Actually there are only about 10 people on comp.lang.forth (even this is a >bit misleading since Tom Almy, Bill Bouma, Mitch Bradley, and John Wavrik are >really pseudonyms for one person who periodically writes a series of heated >exchanges to stir things up)] [John, are you taking credit for other postings? Or am I responding to myself occasionally? Have I added enough heat -- Forth users are unlikely to spend money keeping their furnaces running. :-) of course, I guess.] Tom Almy toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, other than myself, is coincidental.
stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) (11/30/89)
In article <6420@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes: > Why is it that people are willing to pay good money for other languages, > but expect to get good Forths for free? Why did I decide to make a few bucks > (and *very* few) with Forth when I could have made it rich with a > "politically correct" language used by people with $money$? A good question. I've been stewing on an answer for about 10 years. First of all we need to settle on a definition of "good money". I've purchased a number of languages through the years, including: Software Toolworks' C (cpm) $50 Laboratory Microsystems' Z80 Forth (cpm) $50 FIG Forth (cpm) (public domain, but I probably spent about $50 between disks and source listings) Turbo Pascal (msdos) $50 Turbo Pascal version 3.0 (msdos) approx. $50 for update Turbo Prolog (msdos) $70 Turbo C (msdos) $70 Abundance/BBL Forth (msdos) public domain, but I spent $75 Some comments and observations: (1) I've never spent over $100 on ANY language. I don't know how common my parsimony is, but I don't feel too apologetic. Borland products have been uniformly EXCELLENT (for my purposes) for less than $100 so why should I spend more than $100 for a language implementation which is only "good"? (2) I've purchased 3 different Forths over the years, including LMI Z80 Forth. I haven't gotten even a "good" version yet. BEFORE YOU FLAME ME, let me explain. In my opinion, a good software product must be (a) friendly (b) COMPLETE (c) bug free (d) powerful/flexible (e) WELL DOCUMENTED. The strategy I follow to learn a new language is to cursorily read the documentation and then jump in with both feet to write a non-trivial application which I've been thinking about writing in some other language. This strategy has never worked with Forth because (a) none of the Forth implementations I've seen have had adequate documentation to accomodate an experienced programmer who happens to be new to Forth and (b) to quote from a recent Harvard Softworks Forth advertisement: Forth has to [sic] often been the language that tempted programmers with 'great expectations', then frustrated them beyond all endurance with the need to reinvent the simplest tools expected in any commercial language. How am I supposed to react when I sit down to learn Forth by writing a full screen arcade-style game for my PC and find out that *I* first need to write a slough of primatives to perform basic file manipulation, string manipulation and floating point math? There are some further hitches, of course. Before I can undertake to write these primatives I really need to write a decent full screen editor since the vendor doesn't include one and I can't use Wordstar on Forth BLK files. And before I can write either the editor or the primative operations I really need to be an experienced Forth programmer. Oh, yeah, and before you can become an 'experienced Forth programmer' I need to understand esoterica such as DOES> CREATE and the operation of the dictionary and inner interpreter. Of course the vendor doesn't adequately document these esoterica or provide any real examples of their use. Generally the vendor is nice enough to refer you to _Starting_Forth_. Of course, _Starting_Forth_ (unlike K&R's _The_C_Programming_Language_) doesn't document the esoterica, either, but only the simple stuff. Oh well. You can always buy a FIG assembly language listing and try to figure out DOES> CREATE from reading that and examining chicken entrails. (By the way, Kelly and Spies _FORTH:_a_Text_ and_Reference_ *does* explain things in more detail...but it wasn't published until 1986). Forth probably has the steepest learning curve of any language in existence. Given the severity of the learning curve, even "ordinary" levels of documentation are NOT sufficient. No wonder (according to a recent posting to this newsgroup, I believe) an unusually small percentage of Forth programmers are computer science degreed; only hardware hackers have the background to pick up this language easily. This needs to change. (3) Because of the problems mentioned above, a very large number of people have been 'burned' by Forth. They've put time AND MONEY into the language and come out with nothing. Incomplete implementations and lousy documentation have soured an enormous number of talented programmers. If the "public domain" implementations were the whole problem it would be one thing, but I don't think that is the case. When I discovered that the FIG 8080 model wasn't really robust I just wrote it off as "what can you expect for free". But when LMI Z80 Forth wasn't much better I was really irritated. I think my experience with a commercial Forth implementation is shared by many. And you wonder why people aren't anxious to spend more money to try Forth again? (4) Those who survive the Forth learning curve tend to be hardware hacker/ systems programming types. Everyone else has been chased away. Those who remain have commonly read FIG Forth Assembly Source Listings cover to cover. If push came to shove they could write their own Forth from scratch. And many of them have a secret dream of doing exactly that, whether they really need to or not. So...why should they spend more than a hundred dollars to get a merely 'good' Forth?? Tell you what: write a KILLER Forth for Xenix 386 which is competitive with a Borland Turbo C in terms of performance, documentation and "extras" and I would be willing to spend up to $250 for it. But I won't take that gamble for another shot at a "good" Forth. A number of people have written me to mention that Mitch Bradley's CForth runs under Xenix and costs only $50. I'd be delighted to spend $50 except that it's pretty evident from postings to this group and a mail response I got from Mitch that his CForth is a second class citizen under Unix. I'm not disparaging Mitch or his program--I'm sure he's many times over the programmer I will ever be. But the Unix Forth I would like to see must be able to compete with the standard 'C' compiler in terms of PERFORMANCE, support of Unix system calls, and the functionality of standard Unix C libraries. In particular, a Unix Forth must have complete curses support or how can I justify using Forth in place of C? Although Mitch says that curses support could be hooked into CForth it apparently isn't built in. And even if it were built in, even Mitch admits that a CForth program is significantly slower than a comparable C program. (Please folks, don't flame me for these comments--I'm trying to get you thinking and talking... I'm not trying to make an enemy of Mitch or anyone else.) (5) Those who survive the horrendous Forth learning curve and, ultimately, become such experts on Forth internals that they could write their own Forth discover something else: compared to other languages, Forth implementations are EASY to write! Think about it. Writing a high performance, commercially-competitive C or Ada compiler is a extremely intricate task which almost mandates years and years of formal computer science education and many man-years of coding. On the other hand, a Forth hot shot could write a REALLY high performance Forth within 6 months, programming all by himself. And he probably wouldn't have to know a thing about technologies such as compiler-compilers, LALR parsers, and optimizing compilers. So...why SHOULD a commercial Forth vendor expect to be paid as much for his system as another vendor might charge for a C or Ada or Modula-2 compiler? -- {pacbell!sactoh0! OR ucdavis!csusac!}tree!stever
tim@binky.sybase.com (Tim Wood) (11/30/89)
In article <1989Nov20.211822.1015@tree.uucp> stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: >In a recent posting, sabbagh@csd27.nyu.edu (Hadil G. Sabbagh) said: >>...in UNIX, it is not _possible_ to write Forth (in either C _or_ >>assembler !!!) because the "text space" (the segment of memory >>that holds the executable code image) is defined to be >>_read-only_. There may be a way around this if you achieved a >>sufficiently high level of UNIX wizardry and have the right >>priviledges :-). > >Is he correct? That would be terrible. >{pacbell!sactoh0! OR ucdavis!csusac!}tree!stever Wrong-O. You can make a read/write executable image very easily (in BSD UNIX at least). Just pass the -N flag to the 'ld' (linker) program when you build your executable. This is the oldest form of executable, back from the days when there wasn't any text sharing. And it doesn't even require root privilege! :-) -TW Sybase, Inc. / 6475 Christie Ave. / Emeryville, CA / 94608 415-596-3500 tim@sybase.com {pacbell,pyramid,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!tim This message is solely my personal opinion. It is not a representation of Sybase, Inc. OK.
wmb@SUN.COM (12/02/89)
I agree wholeheartedly with many of Steve's comments about the "wimpiness" (my word) and incompleteness of many commercial Forth systems. On the other hand, I would like to present another viewpoint about the economic considerations involved: > So...why SHOULD a commercial Forth vendor > expect to be paid as much for his system as another vendor might > charge for a C or Ada or Modula-2 compiler? Because the commercial Forth vendor has to pay for his food, lodging, office space, taxes, telephone, shipping, printing, and salaries at the same rates as the commercial C vendor. The development effort is a fixed cost, and is only a small component of the cost of doing business. Also, since the market for Forth systems is so much smaller than the market for C compilers, the Forth vendor amortizes his development costs over fewer systems. On a per-unit-sold basis, the Forth vendor may have higher development costs than the C vendor. C compilers used to cost thousands of dollars before C caught on and the market expanded. Furthermore, it is not any cheaper to write the documentation for a Forth system than for any other language. The only way to save money on documentation is to do a crummy job. In order to show a profit, considering the small market for Forth systems, you can't spend too much money up front. Remember what Unix documentation used to be like up until about 5 years ago, before Unix "caught on"? You got a line printer listing of the man pages, and you were lucky if that was up-to-date. > comments about CForth's shortcomings Steve's comments about C Forth 83 are correct. It is missing some things that would be nice to have. The cause of these shortcomings is rooted in economics; I don't (and doubt that I could ever) make nearly enough money from C Forth 83 to justify spending the effort on improving it into a really great system. It is important to understand the "niche" that C Forth 83 fills. C Forth 83 is mainly for those people who use machines for which no better Forth alternative exists. As such, it is important that I keep it as portable as possible. This works against the inclusion of Unix-specific things like curses (while many people use C Forth 83 on Unix machines, it is also used under VMS, DOS, and MVS). I am basically providing C Forth 83 as a service. The $50 price of C Forth 83 is just enough money to keep me doing it. You can't get very high on the "economy of scale" curve when every customer has a different machine with a different OS variant, different media requirements, and different C compiler quirks. Consequently, the bang-per-buck of C Forth 83 will never approach that of Turbo C (which, incidentally, is not getting cheaper). I put most of my effort into products for which I can get a reasonable aggregate return; namely my assembly language Forth products for Suns, Atari STs, and SPARC boards. Those products have many (most?) of the features which Steve identified as desireable. In order to justify the considerable effort and expense of producing and distributing a product, you have to be able to make enough money. That means you need either enough bucks per copy or enough volume (and if you go for a volume market, you have to slug it out with all the other competitors). My prices are fairly low; $50 for the Atari product and $200 for the Sun product. I would be hard pressed to make a living selling Forth systems at those prices. That's why I have a full time job at Sun. Steve argues that the demand for Forth systems might be higher if the quality was higher. This is almost certainly true; on the other hand, there's a chicken and egg situation in the creation of a market; you need the volume to get the price down and the quality up, but you need the affordable, quality, product to create the volume. > (Please folks, don't > flame me for these comments--I'm trying to get you thinking and talking... > I'm not trying to make an enemy of Mitch or anyone else.) No offense taken; the specific complains about C Forth 83 are 100% accurate. I'm just trying to communicate some of the lessons that the marketplace has taught me. Oh, by the way, I note that JForth for the Amiga is an excellent product at an attractive price, yet the developer (Phil Burk) says that he hasn't yet broken even on the product. He has to pay his bills with a real job. Business is tough. Cheers, Mitch
jav@jolnet.ORPK.IL.US (Jaime Viehweg) (12/04/89)
In article <1989Nov29.204348.4416@tree.uucp> stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: > [lots of interesting stuff] I agree with this. I have been looking for a good source of documentation for a long time. I really want to use FORTH but I can't because I don't know how. K&R's C book is short and sweet an all that you will ever need to program in C (except for some special stuff like graphics). I have yet to find a similar book for FORTH. By the way, I have several versions/implementations of FORTH for different computers and if have paid for them all. None more than $50, but then I don't pay too much more than that for anything. Jaime Viehweg ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you want to send me mail, try nccseq!jav@iitmax.iit.edu DISCLAIMER: I really work for North Central College, but, since I'm not using their machine, they don't know what I'm saying anyway!
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (12/04/89)
In article <8912022006.AA02840@jade.berkeley.edu> Forth Interest Group International List <FIGI-L%SCFVM.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu> writes: > > So...why SHOULD a commercial Forth vendor > > expect to be paid as much for his system as another vendor might > > charge for a C or Ada or Modula-2 compiler? > Because the commercial Forth vendor has to pay for his food, lodging, > office space, taxes, telephone, shipping, printing, and salaries at the > same rates as the commercial C vendor... So you're saying that Forth is at a competitive disadvantage with C. Isn't that what we're talking about in the first place... the shortage of good Forth implementations and why people expect Forth to be free? I'd no more pay for a Forth than I'd pay for a version of Make. Or for an assembler. Because I can do one myself in my own time, if I really need it. > C compilers used to cost thousands of dollars before C caught on and > the market expanded. But C had an advantage in the market: it was the only systems programming language large enough to compete and small enough to be implemented on the machines of the time. The competition was basically Pascal. Forth doesn't have an equivalent advantage, outside of a small group of hackers who mostly have the skills to do their own Forths if needed. > Remember what Unix documentation > used to be like up until about 5 years ago, before Unix "caught on"? > You got a line printer listing of the man pages, and you were lucky > if that was up-to-date. Actually, you got a troffed copy of the manual, and up-to-date copies on disk. The presentation wasn't first rate, but as a reference manual it was way better than most. And if anything it's gotten worse... it's not organised as well and the online manuals are gone. -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>. 'U` Also <peter@ficc.lonestar.org> or <peter@sugar.lonestar.org>. "If you want PL/I, you know where to find it." -- Dennis
toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) (12/05/89)
In article <1989Nov29.204348.4416@tree.uucp> stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: >In article <6420@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes: >> Why is it that people are willing to pay good money for other languages, >> but expect to get good Forths for free? Why did I decide to make a few bucks >> (and *very* few) with Forth when I could have made it rich with a >> "politically correct" language used by people with $money$? > >A good question. I've been stewing on an answer for about 10 years. [a list of inexpensive compilers he bought] >Some comments and observations: [If I may summarize: You can get a EXCELLENT C compiler (Borland) for under $100. Why spend more money for a compiler that isn't friendly, COMPLETE, bug free, powerful, and WELL DOCUMENTED?] I can speak for the LMI products (with some bias). But what I have to say probably applies to Harvard Softworks, and MMS Forths. When you bought LMI Z80 Forth it was little more than a warmed over FIG Forth. As such, it was a good deal at $50 because you got the documentation and the program was typed in for you! Current products, while much more expensive do deliver more: File accessing functions equivalent to C's stdio, floating point (hardware and software), string functions, graphics (CGA, Herc, EGA, and VGA), Forth screen editor (but will work with ascii files), and a full assembler. The documentation is FAR better than what used to be given, I'd guess about 400 pages, indexed. But there still is no tutorial. The new Forths are also far more sophisticated (from a CS point of view). >(5) Those who survive the horrendous Forth learning curve and, ultimately, >become such experts on Forth internals that they could write their own >Forth discover something else: compared to other languages, Forth >implementations are EASY to write! Think about it. Writing a high >performance, commercially-competitive C or Ada compiler is a extremely >intricate task which almost mandates years and years of formal computer >science education and many man-years of coding. On the other hand, a Forth >hot shot could write a REALLY high performance Forth within 6 months, >programming all by himself. And he probably wouldn't have to know a >thing about technologies such as compiler-compilers, LALR parsers, >and optimizing compilers. So...why SHOULD a commercial Forth vendor >expect to be paid as much for his system as another vendor might >charge for a C or Ada or Modula-2 compiler? I simply don't agree that a single person could write a modern high performance Forth, from scratch, in 6 months. I think a hot shot could write a Forth kernel from scratch in a month with no problem, but a modern system would need all the features mentioned above, plus a metacompiler for generating target applications, and a native code compiler for performance. I wrote a native code compiler which is bundled with the LMI Forths, and I can tell you that it is not a trivial exercise to come up with code generators that match the performance of modern day C's -- the work is easily several times that of the Forth kernel. Also once you get out of the mass market arena, Forth systems don't cost as much as other languages. For instance, when we got an 80386 system, getting LMI UR/Forth 386 cost $350.00. Upgrades have been free, including the latest VM support. On the other hand, it cost $1500 to get the Metaware High C 386 compiler, and the Phar Lapp 80386 assembler/linker/runtime. I wouldn't be suprised if Borland has sold 100,000 copies of its C compiler. There are probably only a handful of companies that have sold more than 1,000 copies of Forth, and I would expect none have sold 10,000. Figuring Borland had a wholesale price of $50.00 for Turbo C (at the original price), they would probably gross about $20.00 (guessing $30.00 for disks, paperback manuals,). That would give them $2 million. Of course there is the flashy advertising, but that still leaves a good chunk of money for programmers. Now that poor Forth developer not only will sell 1% the volume, if lucky, but also has much higher per unit sales costs. You just can't make money. I bet there are no commercial vendors that don't make at least half their income consulting or holding other jobs as well. To put it another way. If there was money to be make in Forth, there would be a Turbo Forth. Tom Almy toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com Standard Disclaimers Apply, except I get to eat at McDonalds every time somebody buys an LMI Forth system. But I have to eat alone.
Paktor@cup.portal.com (David L Paktor) (12/06/89)
stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes: > I said all that and I got . . . silence. Doesn't anyone knowledgeable who > reads this group share my interest in getting F83 or F-PC or some other > good Forth to run on a 386 Unix?? Don't be so pessimistic, Stevie, old chum. I, for one, have been up to my ears in doggie-poo-poo (Un*x, to be exact... -- These are the people who complain that Forth is obscure????? -- but I digress...), and haven't had much time or opportunity to catch up on my net.reading and am only stealing a few cycles to do a little of same now... I would have been glad to mention good ol' Mitch Bradley, and Tom Zimmer's F-PC (Tom doesn't read the net, BTW), but I see someone has already beat me to it. Another good party to contact is JAX (a.k.a. Jack Woehr), who is a frequent contributor to this group... In article <6420@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes: > Why is it that people are willing to pay good money for other languages, > but expect to get good Forths for free? Why did I decide to make a few > bucks (and *very* few) with Forth when I could have made it rich with a > "politically correct" language used by people with $money$? I won't even *begin* to attempt to answer the "Why" question, but I will venture to dispute the issue of which language is more "politically correct"... (As opposed to "commercially popular" about which there is, sadly, no room to dispute.) I venture to suggest that, by virtue of its "underdog" position, and the fact that people expect it for free, and are often willing to give it away for free (not to disparage your and others' valiant efforts to wring a few hard-earned bucks from it), Forth is the more democratic, and hence "politically correct" of the two. Note that this line of reasoning (if such a lofty word can be applied to the pigsty realm of politics...) does not begin to take into account the actual virtues of Forth... Am I willing to defend this position? Naaaahhhhh! Let me just leave with an observation that in computers, as in many other areas, technical ex- cellence is approximately inversely proportional to commercial success. David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ === Mister Systems === | "You know the times David L Paktor | you impress me the most | are the times when you don't try; Paktor@cup.Portal.com | when you don't even try." -- Joni Mitchell | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~