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From: ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: What makes Forth Forth
Message-ID: <14884@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 08:08:05 GMT
References: <9012092322.AA04013@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 64



                        ASSORTED COMMENTS ON
                       What makes Forth Forth

Mitch Bradley writes,

# It strikes me that we are in the midst of a "tastes great/less 
# filling" debate. 

# The truth is, Forth has a lot of nice properties, many of which 
# have already been articulated.  It also has some flaws.  Trying to 
# decide which subset of good properties is the "essential Forth" is 
# like trying to decide why you like your wife. 

# For whatever reason (the possibility of "dumb luck" cannot be 
# discounted), Forth "caught on", and STOIC didn't. 
# That is why I choose to use Forth in preference to other similar 
# (and arguably "better", in many respects) languages, such as STOIC. 
# PostScript would have been easier to "sell" to the powers-that-be.

I don't think that there is any "debate" in progress -- what I see 
(or should see) is an effort by those who feel that there is 
something special in Forth to help articulate it.

Your programming language is not like your wife. You are not (I 
hope) trying to get other people interested in her. Nor are you 
trying to standardize her so that she becomes portable.

One of the essential reasons that certain languages "sell" to the 
"powers that be" is that its supporters can articulate reasons why 
other people should be interested. Acceptance of a language isn't 
entirely whimsical -- usually someone is able to persuade others 
that it has desirable characteristics. We've tried in the past to 
sell Forth as a branch of Zen Buddhism -- having failed at that I 
don't think we'll do much better making it as mystical as a spouse.
Here's a novel idea: suppose we try selling Forth in terms of 
recognized computer language characteristics.

If the posting is intended as an expression of impatience with 
replies of the "I can do that in C++, Ada or even ABC, URTH, STOIC, 
SKIZL, ACTOR, Smalltalk, BOXER, GASP, Gorpol, or PolyWog" I agree.
While it is important to know that Forth can reproduce some highly
regarded features of other languages, this does not establish what 
Forth has to offer in its own right. "I'd rather be programming in 
STOIC but Forth is more established" is an honest reply -- but 
equally irrelevant.

I don't really see this thread as an opportunity for programmers in 
other languages to tell us how they would like to rearrange the 
furniture to make Forth more like their language. Personally, I 
think that Forth suffers from an overabundance of furniture movers.
Instead it would be productive for the people who find that Forth 
strikes a particularly responsive chord to imagine that, after 
hearing your response, I will go speak to the unconvinced with your 
words in my mouth. I will try to convince them of the value of Forth 
by citing the features that you have told me are responsible for 
making Forth what it is.


                                                  John J Wavrik 
             jjwavrik@ucsd.edu                    Dept of Math  C-012 
                                                  Univ of Calif - San Diego 
                                                  La Jolla, CA  92093