Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sunbelt!eaker
From: eaker@sunbelt.crd.ge.com (Charles E Eaker)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Floating Point Controversy?
Message-ID: <18041@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 29 Mar 91 20:35:28 GMT
References: <17856@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
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>
>                    Is Floating Point Controversial?
>
The only language whose proponents argue over whether floating point is
necessary or desirable is Forth. Everyone I know outside of the Forth
community, when informed of this, just snicker and shake their heads.
A tool's usefulness diminishes in proportion to the extent I have
to adjust and maintain the tool. A good tool does not take my attention
away from the problem I am using it to solve.

>                                    I wonder if the red herring of 
>floating point is being brought up to camouflage other alterations 
>being made to Forth in the name of "marketablity".
>

I wonder if the "floating point, et al., is no big deal" view is a
camouflage for a supremicist movement to keep the riff-raff out of the
Forth community. If so, it certainly has been successful.

>  Not every characteristic of conventional languages is desirable. In 
>many ways what Forth has to offer the world is some of the ways it 
>differs from conventional languages. It would inspire a bit more 
>confidence if the people so articulate about what they want changed 
>could also articulate their understanding of qualities that should be 
>preserved.

What should be preserved is the Forth *WAY* of expressing things, not
the kinds of things that can be expressed in convenient, standard
ways.

>
>  The situation with Forth is a bit like catching your 13 year old 
>daughter heading out the door with too much makeup, a skirt 6" too 
>short and a blouse unbuttoned 5" too low. You tell her
>
>    "Honey, you don't have to do that. There are guys in this 
>    world who will love you for who you really are -- they 
>    just haven't met you yet. And the boys you'll attract that 
>    way, you don't want." 
>
>The question that faces the Forth community right now is: do you 
>really want your language picking up C programmers on street corners!

I don't care how my daughters dress (it wouldn't do any good anyway).
I do care that they are educated, cultured, and articulate; that they
are capable of having conversations with people of all sorts on topics
of all sorts, and that the people they come in contact with are better
for it, and are delighted that they met and spent time with them. I do
not want my daughters to have limited vocabularies. I do not want them
to be limited in the kinds of things they can discuss and the ways they
can interact with people. I certainly do not want them to be unable to
discuss a topic one day, be extraordinarily conversant in it the next,
then speak with an entirely different dialect the next. My daughter's
are certainly not better off when people avoid and ignore them because
they are incapable of carrying on a conversation with them due to their
being completely ignorant of what the other person is talking about. My
daughters are not better off by refusing to interact with people who are
unable to speak to them in their limited vocabulary on their preferred
subjects. That keeps them from being exposed to other people who, with
few exceptions, can broaden my daughters' ranges of experiences and
understandings of the world.

It is not to Forth's advantage to continue to present to the world the
37 faces of Eve. Nor is to Forth's advantage to isolate itself from the
rest of the world for fear of contamination.
--
Chuck Eaker / P.O. Box 8, K-1 3C12 / Schenectady, NY 12301 USA
eaker@crd.ge.com        eaker@crdgw1.UUCP       (518) 387-5964