Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!purdue!bouma From: bouma@cs.purdue.EDU (William J. Bouma) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: General Purpose Forth Message-ID: <13903@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 15 Mar 91 23:51:06 GMT References: <5931@awdprime.UUCP> Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 71 In article <5931@awdprime.UUCP> Tony Sanders writes: >Lets change "general purpose" to "popular" because certainly Forth >is general purpose. You can write games, op systems, etc. No, let's not talk about Forth's popularity. Forth is obviously not popular, so what is there to discuss? The question was "why?". My answer is that Forth is not a GOOD general purpose language. Surely you can program anything you want in it. If that is your criterion for "general purpose", what language is not? The generality I am talking about is that of being fairly easy to use for a large number of different areas. Forth could be the language of choice for writing a game, anywhere that is close to the hardware and doesn't need complicated data types like device drivers, or in a command interface. But there are better, friendlier choices of language if one is doing scientific programming, number crunching, symbol manipulation, database management, ... >As for the "type issue" don't constrain yourself to a single way of thinking >about problems. Just because you don't find Forth useful for what you are >doing there is a whole world of people with different problems to solve. Huh? Yeah, calling me close minded really addresses the points I made. Boy, that bites to the heart of the issue. Your argument is just to overwhelming for me! I guess I was totally wrong when I said "Forth is good for nothing". Hold it! Did I say that? >IMHO, > The "latest innovations" are next to worthless. This is why people > still program in asm, basic, cobol and fortran. The "lastest innovations" > just aren't that much better. There ain't no great salvation waiting Oh, really! What makes you such an authority? I think you need to take some of your own advice. Namely, just because you do not use something does not make it useless to everyone else. Do you even know what the latest happenings in computer languages are? And you presume to call me close minded! People still program in FORTRAN mostly because of tradition. There is a large body of useful code written in it that rightfully should not be simply discarded. FORTRAN is still an excellent language for number crunching. If all you want to do is solve large systems of equations, why bother to learn something more? (the lazyness factor again). Is there anything you can do with FORTRAN you cannot do equally or better with C? No. But if FORTRAN gives all you need, and you already know that, why learn C? People still program in assembly because it is necessary. People still program BASIC and COBOL because of tradition. These two are on the way out out out. (Please?) People still program in Forth because it is still good for what it was designed to do, control telescopes. It is still the best language for command and control of hardware in many situations. Forth has an inherent adaptability that I feel has not been taken full advantage of. The language could have grown along with our knowledge of computer languages. But it seems to be stuck in a niche that has not allowed this to happen. > to be discovered just over the next hill. There are small advances and > good ideas that have a lifetime and then they will be replaced with > something a little better. Which isn't to say that we havn't come > a long way already, just that there is still a long way to go. Oh, is that how it goes? But we are supposed to just ignore the small advancements because the old ideas still work? And just when do the new advancements become large enough to be significant? How do you propose to "replace" something you haven't allowed us to adopt in the first place? -- Bill