Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!NIUENG.BITNET!A01DLH1
From: A01DLH1@NIUENG.BITNET (Don Hayes)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth Pre-Compier
Message-ID: <8809011940.AA02874@jade.berkeley.edu>
Date: 1 Sep 88 17:16:12 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List <FIGI-L%SCFVM.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu>
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29

Hi,
I have been following the discussion of FORTH and how different features
are viewed as *good* or *bad* by different persons. I believe this is
just as likely to occur about any language. I do not claim to be expert
in FORTH by any means. I am a Systems programmer on a VM system right now,
and after over 20 years in the field of Programming and Systems, i don't
see any languages which have all the answers for all problems. I am just
fascinated by the possibilities of FORTH in a real time environment. My
FORTH involvment is on a IBM PC compatible, and can only be classified
as dabbleing. I don't spend much time on the PC at home after working on
a terminal all day. But, for some reason i was attracted to FORTH when i
first read about it several years ago.
Reading Frazer Orr's comments has brought to mind other questions.
Why does he keep dwelling on a FORTH compiler? Is he perhaps writeing
one that he hopes to sell? Or is he just anti-FORTH because he cannot
comprehend the usefullness of being able to tailor a language to fit
ones needs?
It seems to me that a compiler would eliminate a lot of the function
of FORTH and make it just another structured language. It would not
then be as good a solution for the problems that it now does well.
As to the question some time back about why so many programmers chose
and still choose to use COBOL, they very likely only have the choice of
COBOL, FORTRAN or ASSEMBLER for business programs. From these, which
would you choose?


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Don Hayes                         A01DLH1 at NIUENG.BITNET
VM Systems Programmer
Northern Illinois University      Dekalb, Il   USA