Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!YUBGEF51.BITNET!EBERBERS From: EBERBERS@YUBGEF51.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: What makes Forth Forth Message-ID: <9012171449.AA03682@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 16 Dec 90 22:31:37 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: EBERBERS%YUBGEF51.BITNET@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV Organization: The Internet Lines: 60 > Support for all major programming paradigms including OOP > built-in! Since 1971! Yeah! There are a LOT languages which fans could claim the same. Whenever we talk about 'programming paradigms' we are talking more about the way we interpret things and less about what things really are. Strictly speaking neither, C++ nor any present FORTH-with-objects is OO language but that doesn't prevent us from imagining that they are ant that imagination is the one that really helps us understanding and solving real programming problems more efficiently. I'v seen very good OO application in FORTRAN (believe it or not) so I could say that it has 'support for ...' since the ... but that would actually mean nothing except the fact that I or somebody else is feeling well with it. When someone is to produce a piece of useable code ant not to spend a lifetimne on that then it is very that he is able to 1 - 'translate' algorithms to program efficiently. 2 - read and understand programs/routines that somebody have already written (so that he doesn't reinvent the weel) 3 - locate and remove bugs efficiently 4 - produce space/time efficient program 5 - produce a program that is able to live pieacefully with other programs in the system (if he is to sell it to anybody except a very specialized user) Could anybody claim that any present language is perfect or even good for all 5 items? Both vendors and programmers are trying to offer/use systems composed of at least two languages so that a good tradeoff could be made in most real situations. FORTH is a language that has a chance to be good starting point for a really universal language that would be really good for doing everything with it but lets face the fact that right now it is very far from being such language. What makes it exceptional is the fact that for some applications it is much more convenient than any other and there are not a lot of languages which fans could claim the same. So, if someone is happy with that is OK al long as he is not trying to 'prove' that his favourite is a God among languages. There is another question - what FORTH needs to became the real favourite on a large scale? As far as I can see it would be best to have a very good FORTH-processor so that complete UNIX/X-Windows workstation could be built on it. Then, one could have a C implementation in FORTH both as interpreter and compiler and could not only mix C and FORTH code but also change the syntax/semantics of C so that the hybrid will actually behave as a single language capable of handling tasks from robot control to fractal simulations to expert systems and still being very comfortable for producing variuos small utilities. So far about science fiction - the reality is that modern sofware development requires maximal flexibility and interoperability of various language and that present 'omnia mea mecum porto' phylosophy of almost all present programming languages is going to die as soon as operating systems in personal computers start supporting extensive message-based program comunication and shared libraries usage - shell FORTH enter that era still insisting on block-oriented mass storage access and 1024 char source blocks ? Zarko Berberski EBERBERS@YUBGEF51.bitnet