Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!dwp From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: How will others see ANS Forth? Message-ID: <1337.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP> Date: 15 Jul 90 04:49:20 GMT References: <9899@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips. (in Pgh, PA) Lines: 83 In <9899@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, koopman@a.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Philip Koopman) writes: > I told Peter about the floored/symmetric/truncated division > issue. He told me that the ML functional programming language > specified symmetric division in the standard. However, the > first implementation used truncated division for speed, > because "they realized that having any other division as > the default was *stupid*". ML is not supposed to be a particularly > fast language, either. This comment comes from a professional > semanticist and language designer. Apparently, now (several > years later) some folks have complained enough that > implementations are starting to default to symmetric > division (after much resistance the purists, of whom there > are many in CS, won out). I don't get a sense of your point here, are you saying that the "purists" are stupidly getting their way, or, that it was stupid to worry about some efficiency issue in this one place in an otherwise inefficient language anyway and the purists are finally getting things straightened out? > I told him about the problem caused when the 83 Forth Standard > changed definitions of existing words (e.g. NOT). He was > amused. I then told him about the compromise method of > using new names for functions with conflicting widespread > usage. He just laughed and shook his head. Are you implying that his laughter was due to the inappropriateness of the solution or was due to an understanding of the predicament the standards committee was in? > Some folks are worried about how Forth will be judged when > outsiders see the new standard. My brief interaction with > Peter indicates that perhaps there is some merit to their > concern. One way to solve this would be to find a few > non-Forthers to review the standard in its penultimate form. > This should include both engineers and computer scientists > who are *not* Forth experts. I can probably talk Peter into > a 1- or 2-hour review. Can anyone else recruit people from > their organizations? Will folks on X3J14 listen if we > go to this trouble? Should you go to that trouble? Depends on what kind of information you're going to solicit and what you think should be done with it. You don't say that here. Is the review to contain a capsule history that EXPLAINS why each part is the way it is, or are you just going to present it out of context? How are you going to factor for the people who have no inkling of what Forth is (applies to some degree to Peter since you present him as being a non-Forther, albeit, perhaps sympathetic)? "Forth, what a joke, its nothing like " Maybe you should get PostScript programmers to review it: "Gack, pure postfix is obviously the way to go, remove CREATE, VARIABLE, CONSTANT or make them truly postfix"...Obviously I'm being facetious here, but there is an issue which you haven't mentioned: how are you, in the space of 1-2 hours, going to be able to communicate an understanding of Forth philosophy sufficient for the outsider to evaluate the standard fairly *and* actually get to the evaluation of the standard part. I don't mean to say that I think your idea is unworkable, but I do see several difficulties with it. In particular, most of the complaints about the 30-sided wrenches have nothing to do with Forth and everything to do with the political process of reaching a consensus. I don't suppose you even asked Peter what he would have done instead (and why)? This political issue isn't unique to Forth. Perhaps the popular myth of the independant Forth programmer is true enough to the extent to which it engenders separatism instead of cooperation, thus magnifying the problem? Maybe you should include in your list of outsiders some people that have gone through the standards process for other languages? To start a slightly different thread: Has anyone on the TC consulted with anyone from previous ANSI efforts to learn whatever lessons of consensus making might already have already been learned? Does ANSI not provide any political/human-factors assistence to its groups? Are Forth programmers to head strong to actually consider such assistance/advice even if it were available? Does anyone else see that the problems with / and NOT are purely political and that they reflect upon Forth itself only because they reflect upon Forth programmers/vendors/TC-members? (guilt by association?) -Doug --- Preferred: willett!dwp@hobbes.cert.sei.cmu.edu OR ...!sei!willett!dwp Daily: ...!{uunet,nfsun}!willett!dwp [in a pinch: dwp@vega.fac.cs.cmu.edu]