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From: ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Non-Forth systems/languages.
Message-ID: <1332.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jul 90 03:50:01 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 33


 Date: 07-13-90 (08:38)              Number: 3494 (Echo)
   To: ALL                           Refer#: NONE
 From: STEVE PALINCSAR                 Read: (N/A)
 Subj: Am I nuts, or what?           Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE

 There's been a lot of discussion in the past about Forth as a 
 "write-only" language, and Forth has been the subject of much criticism 
 on this account.

 Imagine my surprise when I saw the advertisement for a product by Gimpel
 Software called "The C Shroud" in this month's Dr. Dobb's Journal.  To 
 quote from the ad, "Don't lose sleep while distributing C source code!  
 Translate your C programs into an obscure form, compilable but not 
 understandable....  [Obfuscation features incude] comment removel, 
 identifier translation, optional replacement of if, if ... else, for, 
 while do, continue, break for more primitive control structures... 
 string and character constants optionally expanded to their octal or hex
 equivalents, optional name space merging or splitting to enhance 
 confusion."

 This product, at its special introductory price, costs $198.00.

 Now I ask you, am I nuts, or what?  Have I missed something along the 
 line?  Pay almost two hundred bucks for a product whose purpose is to 
 create unintelligible source code???

 I suppose you could say this is another of Forth's advantages over C: we
 can easily create unintelligible source code without any extra cost 
 options...
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