Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM!wmb
From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Interpret vs. Compile (was: CATCH and THROW)
Message-ID: <9009211313.AA26444@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 20 Sep 90 15:47:31 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
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> How do Forth's interpret/compile, pre-fix/post-fix, state-smart/state-less
> dualities really impact the learnability of Forth?  And does that really
> impact the spread of Forth as a popular language?

Sun desktop workstations have an expansion bus named "SBus".  Each
SBus card is required to have a PROM on it, containing a Forth program
which identifies the board and optionally provides code for accessing
the device during the booting phase.

Mike Saari provides technical support and Forth training for Sbus
developers, most of whom are unfamiliar with Forth, and often even
a little unreceptive.  This week Mike gave a Forth class with over
200 people in attendance.  It is my belief that this represents a
tremendous opportunity for the growth of Forth.

Mike is a strong supporter of interpret/compile consistency.  He gets
pretty tired of explaining  ' vs [']  and  ." vs .(  .  He has bugged
me about it to the extent that I have "fixed" them to work right.  There
was nothing that I could do about ' without violating the standard,
so I changed  [']  to work in either compile state or interpret state.
In interpret state, ['] behaves like ' .  Similarly, I made ." in interpret
state behave  .( .

New users get bummed out when they expect something to work and it doesn't.
Sometimes they give up on Forth.

Mitch