Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!orr
From: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Jack Woehr's amazing productivity!
Keywords: Parallel, controllers
Message-ID: <1586@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Aug 88 13:23:48 GMT
References: <8808121826.AA23206@jade.berkeley.edu> <1575@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <6882@well.UUCP> <1581@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <6951@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr)
Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland
Lines: 45

In article <6951@well.UUCP> jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr) writes:
>In article <1581@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr) writes:
>>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. 
>
>	Frase, I write control apps for a living. In Forth. Sometimes
>two a day.
>
	[Stuff about how to save you company $8000 deleted]

Tell me, would it be fair to say that the majority of control software
is the same, with a few device varations? If so I guess (though I could
be wrong - believe it or not folks !:^) that the reason these savings
can be made and that you can be so productive, is not due to forth
but due to a large degree of software reuse. Thus you are in the position
of buisness and sientific users, in that in the long term it would
be benificial to change (in the very long term), but it would mean
rewritting a lot of established software. Now of course is you adopted
my suggestion of havinf a preprocessor that converted to forth, you 
owuld have the best of both worlds, a nice language and all that lovely
software.
Of coure all of the above could be total rubbish (is there a possibility
that someone is about to agree with that last remark, is this the first
agreement we have had ? <^:), but I don't know anything about your work.


>	As a matter of fact, if you have not yet heard, the annual
>Forth Interest Group convention has been renamed the Real Time Programming
>convention.

How very presumptuous of them! :->

>	Yes, Forth has found a niche at last!
I've never disputed that forth has a niche. I just reckon that niche
is the code generated by a preprocessor.

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