Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!adm!cmcl2!acf3!sabbagh
From: sabbagh@acf3.NYU.EDU (sabbagh)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Success of FORTH in the marketplace
Message-ID: <1076@acf3.NYU.EDU>
Date: 22 Jul 89 17:16:48 GMT
References: <33300@apple.Apple.COM> <4391@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: sabbagh@acf3.UUCP ()
Organization: New York University
Lines: 41

In article <4391@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> dunn@uhccux.UUCP (John Dunn) writes:
>My rule of thumb is, if the user interface is a large part of what the
>program is about, program in FORTH.  Otherwise a programmer-friendly
>language such as C would be preferable for portability reasons, and
>because FORTH tends to be difficult for a project group of more than
>2 people to deal with.  Often it is a good idea to put FORTH interface
>code on top of C application code.
>

Since I kind of started this, I should add my $0.02.  I believe that
this is the REAL advantage of FORTH -- in implementing systems that
are user-interface intensive.  It may seem that FORTHs usage in 
device controllers contradicts this, but it really supports this viewpoint!
After all, the reason FORTH is so big in this area is not because it
has any different ways of communicating via serial and parallel ports, but
because the programmers/scientists/users trying to get data from their
equipment can get their hands on it in FORTH better than any other lang-
uage.

I am happy to hear about non-hardware oriented applications.  If FORTH
is really going to take its rightful place as a seminal language in
Computer Science (next to LISP, FORTRAN, and ALGOL-60) more programmers
and software designers must be committed to using it.  This means that
some real attention should be paid (are you listening, standards 
committee?) on getting FORTH to exploit features of newer conventional
hardware, e.g., 80386/68030/RISC that is being used on conventional
machines, e.g., OS/2, Macintosh, Sun, etc. FORTH-based hardware is
pretty exciting stuff, but it will either be found in embedded systems
or somebody has to build a general-purpose workstation/PC machine.

I am now donning my asbestos suit ;^).  I await the flames...


Hadil G. Sabbagh
E-mail:		sabbagh@csd27.nyu.edu
Voice:		(212) 998-3285
Snail:		Courant Institute of Math. Sci.
		251 Mercer St.
		New York,NY 10012

186,282 miles per second -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law!