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From: John.Passaniti@f201.n260.z1.FIDONET.ORG (John Passaniti)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth and CS
Message-ID: <290.27D24C17@rochgte.fidonet.org>
Date: 4 Mar 91 03:30:00 GMT
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 > The thing that Forth taught me about Computer Science
 > is that syntax is a waste of time.  Not only is syntax
 > a waste of time, in lots of cases it is harmful, because
 > it boxes you in and prevents you from doing something next
 > year.

     I had to think about what you wrote before I 
understood it.  I was going to argue that Forth did have a 
syntax-- otherwise, how could I hop between implementations 
without (much) relearning?  But I realized those words I 
know and love aren't so much a syntax, but rather a 
convention.

     I don't know if I agree that syntax is a waste of time 
or is harmful. That's getting on the edge of Forth as a 
religion, and I guess that when it comes to programming 
languages, I am an atheist.

     I turned my hatred for being boxed in by other 
languages into a love for understanding (computer) 
languages.  After all, you don't have to like the syntax of 
a language like Pascal or 'C' in order to appreciate how to 
write a compiler for it.  And when you understand that, you 
aren't far from understanding how to processing natural 
languages.

     Forth's greatest strength is its greatest weakness. 
While you can find "professional" Forth implementations, the 
lack of real standards across them means a Forth programmer 
has to expect some learning when going to a new 
implementation.

     Until that is minimized, I can't see Forth being 
popular in computer science courses.  (Incidentally, I have 
'C' programs that I can take with confidence between 
different machines, different compilers, and different 
operating systems.  I can give them to others without 
terribly much worry that they will work as expected.  I 
simply can't do that with Forth-- at least not yet.)

 > Some Forth programmers have argued that most of CS is
 > a waste of time.

     If I had to stab at why, I'd guess that most of the 
Forth people I know are more interested in practical 
applications than theory.

     Not that anyone cares, but my computer science career 
was cut short when the theory got to be boring, and the 
lure of doing practical and immediate work caught me.

--  
John Passaniti - via FidoNet node 1:260/230
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