Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!csi.uottawa.ca!news
From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne (055908))
Subject: Re: What's WRONG with Forth?
Message-ID: <1991May17.165007.12089@csi.uottawa.ca>
Keywords: n
Sender: news@csi.uottawa.ca
Nntp-Posting-Host: prgw
Organization: CSI Dept., University of Ottawa
References: <2781.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: Fri, 17 May 91 16:50:07 GMT

In article <2781.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us> ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie) writes:
>Category 2,  Topic 9
>Message 101       Fri May 17, 1991
>D.RUFFER [Dennis]            at 01:07 EDT
> 
>Re: B.RODRIGUEZ2 [Brad]
>
> > Why are colon and CREATE so sacred?
>
>CREATE is not much but given colon it is a simple matter to recreate every
>part of Forth.  Given some very basic knowledge about Forth, you could
>recreate the entire development system (people have done it).  I didn't create
>the "line", but I can understand why it is there.

But isn't the REAL point of having a full-featured development system like
PolyFORTH the idea that you have the TOOLS to create Forth applications?
Sure, given CREATE and : you can in principle recreate the development system,
but isn't the development system code LEFT OUT of the final target application
code?  If so, then it means that people "recreating" the system have to in
fact REWRITE it from scratch.  Or am I misunderstanding the nature of PolyForth?

-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program