Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!sdcc6!ir230
From: ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: What If Nobody Cared?
Summary: Consider
Message-ID: <11736@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 4 Jul 90 07:12:11 GMT
References: <1216.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP> <18754@well.sf.ca.us>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 68



Jack Woehr writes:

| >If ANS Forth is a new language, should anyone bother with it?

| Yes, if it convinces the boneheads who make up the other 97%
| of computer science that Forth is now a *real* language with this
| ANSI seal of Good Housekeeping. Haven't you ever heard of marketing? :-)

ANSI does not approve or disapprove of languages. It primarily
publishes Standards documents. It also establishes procedures which
attempt to assure that the document it publishes is the definitive
version of the language. ANSI does not approve languages, it merely
makes available the instrument others need to make that judgement. An 
ANSI Standard is not a diploma --it is much more like a final exam. 

Some languages go through a development pattern from infancy through
the terrible teens to maturity. An ANSI Standard serves to define a
mature language to achieve portability. It also has the side effect of
announcing to the world that the language is now grown up and has
arrived at a stable state.

An ANSI Standard will not buy respectability -- but it will buy
scrutiny. Many of the people that Mr. Woehr refers to as "boneheads"
are people who make their living studying, developing, and using
computer languages. He is correct in identifying their opinion as 
important in "marketing" a language.

Forth made an impression in the "bonehead" community about 10 years 
ago when it appeared on the scene as one of the most portable 
languages in existence -- and proved itself capable of exploiting the 
characteristics of the (then) newly available small microcomputers. My 
impression is that Forth was not rejected by the "boneheads", but that 
it appeared to be an infant prodigy: something that would require a 
great deal of nurture and development if it were to live up to its 
potential. The bonehead community's immediate needs were for a 
language more fully developed and highly supported than Forth was at 
the time. I suspect that there are not a few "boneheads" who learned 
Forth 10 years ago and have always wondered "What ever became of 
Forth?" -- they'll probably be curious enough to acquire the ANSI 
document to find out (and share their impression with others). Some, 
for a modest consultant fee, will even share their impressions with 
industry clients -- now that an official definition of the language is 
at hand. 

My customers need evidence that Forth has finally become portable and 
powerful without losing the simplicity and flexibility that makes it 
uniquely suited for certain types of work. I suspect that a generic 
statement is that industry clients are looking for evidence that the 
language to be used on their job is portable, stable, and respected. 
A good strong ANSI Standard could go a long way toward providing the 
evidence.
                        BUT

It is dangerous to believe that an ANSI-Standard, *regardless of 
content*, will win approval. It is safer to assume that the ANSI
document will be read, as a definition of the language, by people
who know a great deal about computers, computer languages, 
mathematics, etc. and could cause a definitive rejection of the 
language just as well as tentative acceptance.

                                                  John J Wavrik
             jjwavrik@ucsd.edu                    Dept of Math  C-012
                                                  Univ of Calif - San Diego
"We will release no Standard                      La Jolla, CA  92093
   before its time"
                   --Charles "Chuck" Taylor