Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!willett!dwp
From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: BASIS Feedback
Message-ID: <1232.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jun 90 05:05:38 GMT
References: <1229.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Organization: Latest link in the ForthNet chain.  (Pgh, PA)
Lines: 51

In <1229.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>, W.BADEN1 [Wil]

I'm still confused, but I think I understand what is confusing me a little
bit better, so lets try again...

> The domain for Forth is absolutely expanding.  (Dare I say it again?) Forth's 
> forte is its economy.  No matter how rich you get there is a place for 
> economy.  
Where is the value in economy when you yourself don't want to retreat to
a system 100's of times slower and smaller in order to justify it?  You
claimed that you weren't going to turn your Mega-Mac into a Toaster so
that you could use Forth.  This is what I see as incongruous.  On the
one hand Forth is powerful, simple and applicable to BIG systems, but
you don't want to use it on your BIG Mega-Mac system?  I'm confused.

If you won't use Forth on your MegaMac, why?  Because your
Mega-Mac isn't small enough?

I agree that simplicity is a virtue.  I agree that the impoverished
systems are on the decline and that therefore the profane languages are
making in-roads into what was once Forth's/Assembler's sole domains.  Is
a response in the vein of F-PC and BBL/Abundance appropriate, or is
there some other more appropriate response?  Such as your "extensions"
or "layers" or what-ever-they-are-called or something else?
(I see the 'vein' of F-PC and BBL/Abundance as do you, being in violation
of Forth's simplicity, but I can also see the other side of the coin, which
is that they "could" be done as "extensions" to a core Forth).

> Forth is losing its amateur rating.  Forth was THE best language for  amateurs
> (called "hackers" in those days, but that name has gotten a bad  new meaning).
Why is this happening?  To many BASIC interpreters shipped free with
machines?  A dwindling number of amateurs (absolute or percentage)?  Merely
the absorption of Windows/Interactivity/etc. from Forth into the profane
languages?

> Now it's a language for pro-pro's (professional  programmers).  Not all pro-
> pro's though.  It's for pro-pro's who WANT to or  HAVE to dive into the muck
> and mire of nitty-gritty programming.  But they  don't want to do it
> completely bare-skin.  Forth is a prophylactic against the disease of raw
> machine code.
I'm not sure I understand this point.  Forth seems to me to be simultaneously
a high-level language and a low-level language.  Are you saying here that
Forth can not be used merely as a high-level language, or perhaps just that
it will not be used merely as a high-level language, or did I misread you
totally?

-Doug

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