Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!PENNDRLS.BITNET!DAVID From: DAVID@PENNDRLS.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Thinking FORTH Message-ID: <8807291946.AA14510@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 29 Jul 88 15:01:35 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 39 Fraser Orr writes: >If what you are saying is that traditionally people wrote subroutines in >Fortran, C etc that were too long, I agree. But if you also are saying >that the solution is to throw away these languages and use Forth, I >totally disagree. It seems to me a much better solution is to encourage >people to program properly ( i.e. with thought sized subroutines.) Agreed. My programming in all languages has improved since I learned FORTH (specifically since I read `Thinking FORTH'). And no, I don't think we should throw away traditional languages. When a language is suited to a problem, I use that language. For example, when I want to crunch numbers, I use FORTRAN. If I want to write a UNIX utility program, I use C. There is a limit to the extent to which one can apply the `small is better' philosophy in a traditional language, however. At some point the overhead of a subroutine call makes smallness impractical. C's macro facility goes a long way toward alleviating that problem, though. Yet even when I write what I feel is an appropriately sized subroutine in C, it is still larger visually than the corresponding FORTH program and therefore harder to grasp and think about. At this level we are talking about a small difference, but that, after all, is what religious arguments are all about! :-) >> I am gratified to know that the resulting >>programs are faster than comparable traditional chips, as well as >>smaller. >It is quite interesting to hear all you forth programmers going on about >how wonderful it is that you have micro-processors that can run your >favorite language. I say this because chips like 68000, 80386 32000 >etc, are chips specifically designed to run languages like C. I would be >interested to see any experimental results comparing the preformance of a >Forth chip running forth compared with a 68000 running C. I'm sorry, I thought that *was* what we were talking about. But you are right, the original poster was probably discussing FORTH-only benchmarks. I will reserve my enthusiasm until I hear the kind of comparison you request. (Designing a fair benchmark may be a little tricky though, come to think about it.) -- R. David Murray (DAVID@PENNDRLS.BITNET, DAVID@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU)