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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Query about Amiga Forth's
Keywords: Amiga, Forth
Message-ID: <253@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 30 Apr 89 17:57:07 GMT
References: <934@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Followup-To: comp.lang.forth
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 29

In article <934@syma.sussex.ac.uk> marksm@syma.susx.ac.uk (Mark S Madsen) writes:
>I would also be interested to hear of any other Amiga Forth's, either
>commercial or freely distributable, and what the net's opinions are. 

I highly recommend that you check out J-Forth. Interestingly enough,
the authors of J-Forth used it to win "The Fastest Programmers in the World"
contest a few months ago. (The contest was to program a 7 pixel row of LED's
that was swinging in an arc at a programmable rate, to display a Times Square
scrolling message that said "the rain in spain falls mainly on the plains"
by courtesy of stroboscopic motion blur, an impressive problem to solve in
only 1.5 hours.  They were the only ones to succeed within the 2 hour time
limit.)

They demonstrated it at BADGE (Bay Area Amiga Developers Group, Eh) and
it has some really extraordinary features. One of the more basic ones is
that it produces tightly optimized 68000 assembler so that it runs like
a bat out of hell, yet still supports the highly interactive "interpreter-
style" type of interface.

It looks like it just might be the most powerful language support system
available on the Amiga. I've always used C myself, and wish that some of
the J-Forth features were available for C. Word of mouth about J-Forth
has been highly complementary for some years now.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt			Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow
{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug	Professional Wildeyed Visionary

"Of course, I'm no rocket scientist" -- Randell Jesup, Capt. Boinger Corps