Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!alberta!idacom!andrew
From: andrew@idacom.UUCP (Andrew Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Success of FORTH in the marketplace
Message-ID: <708@idacom.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jul 89 20:20:34 GMT
References: <33300@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: IDACOM Electronics Ltd., Edmonton, Alta.
Lines: 30

In article <33300@apple.Apple.COM>, landon@Apple.COM (Landon Dyer) writes:
> FORTH is also getting creamed in the marketplace because of the snake-oil
> attitude of some of its proponents.
> 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.

I agree, but in deference to Forth programmers, I think they (we?) have
developed a complex from the continual bashing the language receives from
programmers who don't use the language as it was intended to be used.  It
is not another Algol/Pascal/C style of language.

Our experiences at IDACOM are that newcomers to Forth dislike it at first
because they write code as a C programmer would, which doesn't work well
for Forth.  Words are not really equivalent to functions or subroutines
found in procedural languages.  We're not taught to factor to the extent
that Forth demands.  Large Forth words suffer from excessive stack manipu-
lation words which lead to frustration with the language.  They also can't
be interactively debugged as easily.  Other features, such as the ability to
execute code at compile time, aren't really used because those kinds of
things aren't available in the "blessed academic languages".

Forth is supposedly easy to learn, but I think that the learning curve to
"think Forth" is steep.  Learning this language is not just a matter of
learning the syntax, but also learning the style and methodology of using
the language.
-- 
Andrew Scott			andrew@idacom
			- or -	{att, watmath, ubc-cs}!alberta!idacom!andrew