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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: FORTH as a language for Professional programmers
Message-ID: <9007020310.AA02614@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 30 Jun 90 18:39:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Mitch Bradley <wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 26

> Pascal, FORTRAN, FORTH, ASSEMBLER, ADA, MODULA are ALL better languages than
> C.  So how come so many more Bookstore Shelf Inches are devoted to "C"??

Because the the first claim is only true in some theoretical or aesthetic
sense, and not in a practical sense.  The fact is, C is more *useful* for
a wide variety of real programming tasks than any of the others.  Assembler
is hopelessly non-portable and very difficult to write and maintain.
Pascal, FORTRAN, and MODULA make it difficult to deal with the "real"
machine by attempting to hide too much.  FORTH completely ignores the
operating system.  ADA is just too big and cumbersome to deal with.

In some sense, C is an ugly language, but in another sense, it is an
engineering triumph.  By and large, it can be used to do most jobs
reasonably efficiently, and you don't end up spending too much time
working around its deficiencies.  It is relatively complete, and of
a manageable size (at least for most professional programmers).

Finally, C has momentum.  There is are many examples of strong positive
feedback in the economy.  It's called momentum.  It's hard to get a
ball rolling, and once rolling, it's hard to stop it.

Nearly every processor chip ever invented has a better architecture
than the 8086 family, so how come there are more PCs than everything
else put together?

Mitch