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From: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: OOF
Message-ID: <1674.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 4 Sep 90 05:18:26 GMT
References: <9008310101.AA27622@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
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In <9008310101.AA27622@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes:

> 	a) That person wants to participate in or direct the design of same,
> 	   and thus achieve, fame, fortune (ha!), and personal satisfaction.
> 
> Now, back to motivation (a) (research, personal fame).  I think that
> a big proportion of the Forth community is motivated thus.  (I do not
> claim to free of such leanings.)  I once had a discussion about Unix
> with Chuck Moore.  Chuck objected to Unix on the grounds that he thought
> that he could do a better job of writing many or all of the Unix utilities
> and drivers, and didn't I think so too.  I replied that in a lot of cases
> I could, but that had neither the time nor the desire to rewrite every bit
> of software in the world.

I think you have hit upon an interesting dichomoty in the Forth community:

Some people want to use Forth to further their own ends, whatever they
may be.  Forth's flexibility may make it ideal for that purpose.

Some people want to use Forth as a base to write above.  Forth's flexibility
is less obviously a winning attribute here.  The idea is to get above Forth,
not tinker with it.

There are those of us who fall into both groups at various times.

(I add in passing that the GNU project is doing just what CM suggested,
 though that is more a side effect of their real goal.)

One thing your last sentence points up:  There is always a trade-off
between spending amount of effort/time X into building a better tool so as
to save effort/time Y when that tool is used.  My personal experience is
that investing effort/time in the X direction is a good thing not often
done.  I have seen a heck of a lot of "I would rather spend an extra 30
minutes a week fighting to cover the warts of the system than spend a day
to remove them."  The cost/benefit analysis ALWAYS favors the short term
goals under such thinking.

-Doug

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