Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!wlee From: wlee@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Wan Ngai Wayne Lee) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Flammable question Message-ID: <3046@uwm.edu> Date: 24 Mar 90 02:08:47 GMT Sender: news@uwm.edu Reply-To: wlee@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Wan Ngai Wayne Lee) Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lines: 45 In peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes >Forth gives you space efficiency. It doesn't give you much in the way of time >efficiency. In general, unless you spend a lot of time on micro-optimisation, >Forth is a pretty slow beast. Even a good compiled Forth will lose out to a >good compiled HLL, simply because you give up too many opportunities for >compiler optimisations when you work in such a low level language. Forth does give you time efficiency. After all, it is the APL & FORTH programmers claim the title of the world's fastest programmer. If you are talking about run-time efficiency, most computer systems aren't optimized for FORTH but HLLs like FORTRAN & PASCAL. If you want run-time efficiency, use a FORTH engine such as SC32, RTXs or at lease get an Zilog Super8. >> Clarity is mainly depended on >> the programmer. I don't find C has any more clarity than FORTH. >I do. I've worked with some pretty large Forth programs, and unless you're an >incredible programmer it's just unmanageable beyond a (fairly low) threshold. Read the source of L&P F83, then tell me what you think. >It's a small systems language. You should try F-PC. A PD FORTH for PC with about 3 MB of source code. It has window, graphics, floating-point, hypertext help & editor, target compiler, and mouse support. In <9003230003.AA15895@jade.berkeley.edu> wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes >The interesting thing is, new Forth programmers tend to write long >procedures too. Then, if somebody yells at them or twists their arm >for long enough, they will eventually start to use shorter and shorter >procedures, and then they are convinced. I didn't write long procedures when I started. Probably because 1) I use blocks 2) everything I read says keep them short >When they go back to programming >in another language (e.g. C), the short procedure style will carry over, >and they will be more willing to pay the syntactic price. When I took my PASCAL and FORTRAN course, I was forced to write short procedures. The TA said procedure better be within one screen, otherwise points off.