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From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Basics of the Forth Language
Message-ID: <2089.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 11 Dec 90 02:57:37 GMT
Organization: String, Scotch tape, and Paperclips.  (in Pgh, PA)
Lines: 58


 Date: 12-08-90 (16:04)              Number: 423 of 429 (Echo)
   To: GARY SMITH                    Refer#: 403
 From: MICHAEL HAM                     Read: NO
 Subj: BASICS OF THE FORTH LANGU     Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE
 Conf: FORTH (58)                 Read Type: GENERAL (+)

 Here are my thoughts on Forth's identifying characteristics:

 1.   Extensible:  user adds commands to the language--same
           structure and action (executed by name) as native
           commands.

 2.   Resident compiler:  the compiler is part of the language
           itself and is factored into individual commands that
           can be used in ad hoc ways.

 1 & 2 -->  Extensible compiler.

 3.   Truly interactive:  new commands can be executed upon
           definition.

 4.   Modular:  each new command is a module.

 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 --> Prototyping language, useful for exploratory
      programming and incremental refinement/development.

 5.   Compact:  language and its programs require very little
           memory (due to implementation).

 6.   Application-responsive:  extensibility and modularity
           results in the programmer developing the language to
           match the applications, so that in time the word set
           is "tuned" to the common situations the programmer
           encounters in his/her specific applications.

      Another term for this characteristic:  Experience-driven
      development of (and extensions to) the language.  This
      applies to the development of Forth itself, as a language--
      it was created and shaped on the front lines, as it were, by
      practicing programmers, rather than in a university or
      research lab.

 7.   Minimalist language:  Forth embodies and embraces an economy
           of means.  This leads to the perhaps notorious lack of
           safeguards and compiler checking.

 Forth's easy accommodation of extensions to and revisions of the
 language is in its protean nature, so that any implementation may
 vary in its specifics from other implementations while still
 being consistent with the general rule of accommodating the
 programmer's intention.

 NET/Mail : LMI Forth Board, Los Angeles, CA (213) 306-3530
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