Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM (Mitch Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Prices of Forth systems Message-ID: <9008291905.AA11250@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 29 Aug 90 18:27:08 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Mitch Bradley Organization: The Internet Lines: 46 > So are you claiming that [the market for Forth systems] is just small now, > or that it will never get larger? I am claiming that no individual Forth system vendor is anywhere near large enough to dramatically affect the total size of the Forth marketplace by advertising. It is possible for a very large company to dramatically and unilaterally affect the size of a marketplace, but rarely can a small company do it. In the global marketplace, it is very hard to "get a ball rolling". There appear to be strong positive feedbacks in the economy (Sci. Amer., Feb. 90 I think). Applying this concept to a different topic, let's consider the issue of prefix/postfix defining words. We all seem to agree that it would be "better" to separate the creation of a forth "object" (colon definition, variable, etc) from giving it a name. We could design a new language that fixed this problem and other problems with Forth. Would it succeed? Almost certainly not. Hundreds or even thousands of computer languages have been designed and implmented, and only 10 or 20 have more than a handful of users. By this criterion, Forth has been wildly successful. It has "made the cut" in this sense. It isn't in the "top tier" with C and FORTRAN and COBOL and perhaps LISP , but it actively used by a not-insignificant number of people. A few people even eke out a meager existence supporting it. Viewed in this light, I think that trying to design a new Forth-like language is an utter waste of time. From a practical standpoint, we should be trying to nurture Forth, patching over its faults as best as we can. That is what I feel that I am helping to do with my participation in the ANS Forth effort. Aha! There you have it. I have just written my manifesto! Forth won't burst into the limelight, but maybe its ultimate demise (for all things die) can be postponed, and perhaps the market will even grow by a modest amount. Dare we hope for a factor of 2? Mitch