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From: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.lang.forth
Subject: Re: What's so good about FORTH? (lo
Message-ID: <468@astroatc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Jul-86 10:11:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: astroatc.468
Posted: Tue Jul  1 10:11:25 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Jul-86 04:15:50 EDT
References: <650@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> <3700005@uiucdcsp>
Reply-To: philm@astroatc.UUCP (Phil Mason)
Followup-To: net.lang.forth
Organization: Astronautics ATC, Madison, WI
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In article <3700005@uiucdcsp> johnson@uiucdcsp.CS.UIUC.EDU writes:
>
>The main reason that Forth is popular is its programming environment.
>Interactive programming environments that support an incremental
>development of an application is the best way for one or two people.
>If they have not built such an application before then they can quickly
>fix bad design decisions and are essentially using the language as a
>rapic prototyping tool.  If they have, then they can reuse most of the
>code from the earlier application.

Forth is great for reusable software tool writing. With Forth, it is possible
to give each sofware engineer much more of the entire application to work on
since the development time is much shorter. There is a very good principle
to follow when trying to get an efficient implementation : write two versions,
throw the first one away. With Forth it is quite easy to implement an
application one way, decide how it should be, and then do it over. You will
still beat the more traditional design philosophy hands-down. Most other
languages and operating systems don't give you the time and energy to make
multiple implementations of an application before your deadline.

>Forth has other advantages, as has been mentioned, principally its
>efficiency, ability to run on small machines, and ability to do low-level
>I/O.  However, I think that its primary advantage is its programming
>environment.  Of course, Lisp programming environments have provided
>these features for nearly two decades, but have only become generally
>available fairly recently.  Scheme compilers have the potential to produce
>extremely efficient code, and Lisp-machine Lisp is used to write the
>entire operating system.  As memory becomes cheaper, there will be no
>good reason not to use these other languages instead of Forth, and the
>many, many disadvantages of Forth will kill it.

I really enjoy LISP. There's nothing wrong with it; but, I'd never want to
write real-time software in it and I'd never want to port the langauge to 
another computer. I've never seen a standard implementation of LISP that
deals with the low-level environment of the machine it runs on. With
Forth, you can reach the low-level, high-performance end of the machine
and still have a self-contained environment that is stand-alone. No 
operating system needed, no monitor ROM - Forth is ROMmable and 
self-contained. On the other hand, Forth can be made to run under any 
operating system, if desired.

Think Big, Build Small, Port Everywhere - - - 
			  
			       Control the World with Forth.



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Kirk  : Bones ?                |  Phil Mason, Astronautics Technical Center
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...seismo-uwvax-astroatc!philm |  I would really like to believe that my
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