Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!sdcc6!ir230
From: ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: What makes Forth Forth?
Message-ID: <14939@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 90 03:51:08 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 67


Mitch Bradley writes,
# I have a tremendous amount of experience trying to "sell" Forth to 
# other people.  I have "sold" it to the world's leading workstation 
# vendor, an entrenched "C" shop.  As a result, there are 100,000 more 
# Forth interpreters than there were a year ago. 

# I found that talking about features was pretty much a waste of time. 
# You pretty much have to prove your point by showing people what you 
# and they can do with Forth.  In my experience, the number of people 
# who are swayed by technical arguments is negligeable. 

# In the final analysis, it often boils down to:  Can I hire someone 
# to solve the problem for me, in a language for which I can later 
# hire someone to support it?  How much will the total project cost? 

# That's where the market acceptance comes in. 

We tend to forget that lots of different people do lots of different 
things. Engineers who produce products are often not the same people 
as salesmen who sell them, researchers who design them, executives who 
decide to buy them, or teachers who explain their underlying 
principles. While Mitch Bradley is writing boot proms for SUN Work-
stations, I will be in San Antonio (in March) talking to a group 
of computer scientists interested in Computer Science Education. I 
will be explaining to them some of the ways I have found Forth useful 
in teaching computer science to college students -- and why they might 
find it worthy of consideration. I know from past experience that 
these people tend to think of computer languages in terms of language 
characteristics. I also know that there is no way to be too informed. 
I have a strong feeling that my audience will not be impressed if I 
tell them that Forth is a good language because it's a lot like Mitch 
Bradley's wife.* 

Many (all?) computer languages get accepted because they are taught.
A language gets taught because it has certain characteristics.** It 
may be that these characteristics serve as "training wheels" to teach 
students good programming habits. Or it may be that these 
characteristics make the language suited for a particular class of 
"real" applications. 

Changing computer language is a major time committment for most people 
-- they don't do it unless that have good reason to believe that the 
new language will perform better than the old. They certainly must put 
in an effort to explore the new language in their own field -- but 
getting them to this stage is critical. There are things that can be 
said, and must be said, about a language to get them to this point. 

I quite understand that many people don't have anything to say about 
the characteristics of programming languages. Some people do, however.
I, for one, have good reason to want to hear what others have to say 
on the subject. The topic "What makes Forth Forth?" is quite 
legitimate. Not only is it interesting in its own right, but it does 
have bearing on attempts to extend the acceptance of the language (to 
say nothing of attempts to standardize it).
=============== 

*  This is not a negative reflection on Mitch Bradley's wife. I don't 
   know Mitch Bradley's wife -- but I'm sure I will like if she's as 
   much like Forth as Mitch says.  8-)

** Although there is more to getting a language taught than this.

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