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From: dwp@willett.pgh.pa.us (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Use explicit arguments
Message-ID: <2325.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 11 Feb 91 12:35:12 GMT
References: <9102050318.AA12062@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 30

In article <9102050318.AA12062@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>,
	wmb@MITCH.ENG.SUN.COM writes:
> It should be easy for the compiler to figure out that it can do the
> optimization.  Chuck wasted a lot of people's time when he introduced
> a new function to handle a special case of an existing construct, rather
> than make his compiler a little smarter.  The compiler optimization would
> have made everybody's existing code run faster, rather than making everybody
> rewrite their code, which then would be incompatible with systems without
> FOR .. NEXT .
> 
> Admittedly, DO .. LOOP is a bit of a crock, but it is a crock with a lot
> of history behind it, and it does in fact work.

I think you hit the nail on the head.  CM strikes me (from what I've read)
as one that is willing to toss crockery and start afresh with the "right"
thing.  As to whether X3J14 should do the same, I doubt it.  Too bad that
there isn't a category for <This feature is here because of our mandate for
not breaking lots of code.  However, this feature is being replaced by X
which is what should be used to write new code.>

> Of course, C has had autoincrementing pointers for 20 years.  In Forth,
> a new idea is when Chuck reinvents or finally decides to use something
> that has been around since the dawn of time.  Then everybody decides that,
> if Chuck says it, it must be right.

That seems to be a problem with languages defined by a visionary.

-Doug
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