Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!kth!draken!tut!ra!rosenber
From: rosenber@ra.abo.fi (Robin Rosenberg INF)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Success of FORTH in the marketplace
Message-ID: <143@ra.abo.fi>
Date: 21 Jul 89 23:13:47 GMT
References: <33300@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: Abo Academy, Finland
Lines: 49

In article <33300@apple.Apple.COM>, landon@Apple.COM (Landon Dyer) writes:
> 
> I'll sure agree with (a).  I've known half a dozen or so FORTH programmers
> who thought they were any good in the language.  Only one of them wrote code
> I could read; the rest were so caught-up in language features that they
> forgot to write good programs.  Instead they wrote ugly, unmaintainable
> things that we generally threw away at the first opportunity, or simply
> ignored.

It's too much fun to write nifty features, and takes too much time especially 
when one could do well without them. 

> I'd like to see fewer claims along the lines of "It's a great floorwax, so
> it must also be a great toothpaste!" and more stories like "I successfully
> used FORTH to do an important project X," optionally ending with, "I also
> made a million bucks doing it," or "... and thus I saved my company's
> bacon."

I know of a company that made a lot of bucks on a FORTH program. The program
was an advanced (at that time) three-dimensional spread sheet. Ever hear of 
Calc Result for the C64, PET and IBM PC?. They also wrote a word processor in
Forth called Word Result. They got a swedish "export award" two years in a row
due to these programs. 
It is a long time since I heard of any software from the same company so I
don't know if they produce software at all nowadays.

Also, a Finnish ship yard is using Forth for programming marine equipment. 

> I'm sick of smug, mindless drivel about nifty language features, the
> implication being that other languages (and a lot of damn fine language
> people) lack some divine spark and that FORTH is going to take over the
> world Real Soon Now.  Right.

No I don't think Forth is going to take over the world. Forth is too hard
to learn. The syntax is easy, but thinking Forth is harder. And one also
must remember that ones major task is not to invent langauge features unless
one NEEDs them.

> So what have YOU successfully used FORTH for?

ME?. A word processor but I never even attempted to sell it, so that does
not count. But it *was* easy to write. 

So am I going to use Forth? Maybe. I got JForth and it has the wheels so I
don't have to invent them. On the other hand I have a C compiler with a
source level debugger. Forth has some real stiff competition I would say.

----------
Robin Rosenberg