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From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.object
Subject: Re: blip [Re: Dynamic typing -- To Have and Have Not
Message-ID: <3G5A4WF@xds13.ferranti.com>
Date: 21 Mar 91 15:27:45 GMT
References: <11820:Mar1923:59:3591@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <19MAR91.22493670@uc780.umd.edu> <18271:Mar2013:19:1091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Mar21.003805.28496@cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 25

This is a bit of a digression here, but...

In article <1991Mar21.003805.28496@cs.cmu.edu> ram+@cs.cmu.edu (Rob MacLachlan) writes:
> Another aspect of Lisp that aids reuse, but which is poorly understood (even
> in the Lisp community) is meta-programming.  The ease of adding new linguistic
> features (and their associated semantics) to Lisp is the main reason why Lisp
> systems were the first to offer "industrial strength" object oriented
> programming environments.

Why is this seen as a strength of Lisp, but a shortcoming in Forth?

I think largely because Forth typically runs on systems tens to hundreds
of times slower than Lisp, and the dynamic typing and interpreter overhead
(both in memory and wall-time) becomes more obvious. Certainly a dynamicly
typed Forth is possible: look at Postscript.

(personally, I don't see why there needs to be a debate. There are good
 reasons for using both types (heh) of language in appropriate contexts.
 What's appropriate for a small standalone utility or an embedded system
 and what's appropriate for a GUI-based program running on a workstation
 are completely different beasts... we need floor waxes *and* dessert
 toppings, and a single tool won't do for both jobs)
-- 
Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter@ferranti.com
+1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"