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From: wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: What makes Forth Forth
Message-ID: <9012092322.AA03978@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 90 22:56:25 GMT
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Reply-To: wmb%MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
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Forth is one of the few interactive languages that are at the same time
reasonably compact and reasonably fast.

There are other such languages, e.g. STOIC.

Forth is not necessarily the "best" such language.

One of the things that makes Forth different from other languages of the
same ilk is that it is (relatively) successful and other languages aren't.

For whatever reason (the possibility of "dumb luck" cannot be discounted),
Forth "caught on", and STOIC didn't.

It is extraordinarily difficult for any particular language to "gain
momentum" and develop a non-trivial user community.  Often, technical
issues have little to do with the momentum-building process.

That is why I choose to use Forth in preference to other similar (and
arguably "better", in many respects) languages, such as STOIC.

Mitch Bradley, wmb@Eng.Sun.COM