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From: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Infix operators
Keywords: Parallel, controllers
Message-ID: <1581@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Aug 88 14:17:52 GMT
References: <8808121826.AA23206@jade.berkeley.edu> <1575@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <6882@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 38

In article <6882@well.UUCP> jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr) writes:
>	Nonetheless, what can we say but, "if you are not a true believer,
>Brother Orr, you cannot know the joys of Total Immersion in Forth ..."
>
Did you miss out a simely there brother Jack? :-)

>	One point of fact though that we wish to quibble with you: your
>reference to a list of projects, predominantly control projects, done
>in Forth as a "list of totally inappropriate uses of Forth".
>
>	As of 1988, it looks like Forth is taking the embedded control
>industry by storm. Reasons: tiny, complete programming environment;
>ease of translation of concept to reality; body of talented, well-trained
>Forth programmers to do the job; amazing power of Forth-oriented microchips
>like the Zilog Super8 and the Harris RTX.
>
Jack, are you suggesting that because "industry has taken it
by storm", that it is necessarily the best (or even appropriate)? If so,
do you also support COBOL as the best for buisness work, or Fortran for
sientific work (yes, I know all the arguments about software libraries
etc, but that's not the point, we're discussing what is the most appropriate
medium to express your ideas is).

I think though my statment was perhaps too strong though. I don't
really know how good forth is for this kind of work, since I have
never done such programming in forth. What I am absolutely certain of
though, is that  if you used a preprocessor that allowed infix, procedures
with parameter lists, type checking, and all the other things that the
rest of the Comp Sco world has agreed to be benificial, then the job would
be much easier.

Moreover if you designed your new language so that it mapped easily
onto forth, then you could compile directly to forth, and use these new
wonder microprocessors also. Or to put it another way, have your cake and
eat it!

Regards,
===Fraser (orr%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nss.ucl.ac.uk)