Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!well!jax
From: jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Declining Forth popularity.
Summary: Declining? Not on my beat!
Keywords: Forth, changes, extensions, marketing, embedded, control, realtime
Message-ID: <15059@well.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 89 02:41:55 GMT
References: <1989Dec14.013516.24694@tree.uucp>
Reply-To: jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 98

In article <1989Dec14.013516.24694@tree.uucp> stever@tree.uucp (Steve Rudek) writes:
>
	... lots deleted here and there below ..

>It seems to me that Forth use is in decline.  

	Possibly in program development for IBM PC's. I.e., what
Forth runs under Windows?

	But Forth is BOOMIN in embedded systems and realtime control
as witness the December issue of Embedded Systems Programming,
the January issue of Dr. Dobbs, and many other sources.

>It's possible I'm
>mistaken, but I've noticed that computer magazines have increasingly 
>distanced themselves from the language and that even past Forth implementors
>seem anxious to dissociate themselves from Forth.

	Not ESP or Dr. Dobbs. Implementors disassociating selves? Who?
Your Ray Duncan example refuted by his column in the december ESP.
Dr. Dobbs example refuted by January issue.

>And notice how hidden are the few remaining ads for Forth
>implementations.  I got a 150 page catalog from The Programmers Shop which
>contained probably 1500 language products...but only one Forth
>implementation. 

	Forth programmers don't *need* all the expensive tools
that
other programming langauges require. No "lint" for example! No
expensive debuggers. I  don't know why programmers shop, etc.
don't carry H/S Forth, but so what?

>
>What happened?  WHY did it happen?  What (if anything) can be done to reverse
>or at least halt the declining popularity of Forth?
>
	What's happening is that Forth has gravitated to its natural
niche, systems where Forth is the beginning and end of it, i.e., 
embedded systems. At Vesta Technology, Inc., we sell a variety of
board for control programming with standalone Forth. We don't
need no steenking operating system! Vesta is a five-year-old
startup, we're growing over ten percent this  year in sales this.
Over the five years of Vesta, annual growth is well over 20%. 

>In <14874@well.UUCP> jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr) said:
>> 	Forth showed a path for the future, but the future diverged
>> perversely. Imagine if it had been Forth, not hopelessly crippled BASIC,
>> that had been provided to every purchase of a late-'seventies micro ???
>
>The implication is that Forth would now be the premiere language for
>computer programmers, I guess?  I think it's more likely that far fewer
>microcomputers would have been sold and that the microcomputer revolution
>would have been delayed by several years until other languages came around.

	I disagree. Forth is a great operating system. I launch C
applications, ASM applications, etc., from my standalone Forth
single-boards.

	If the Amiga had been programmed in Forth, It would have
been ready a year sooner and would have offered interpretive graphics
from the command line ...

>I *still* don't know Forth well enough to write a decent video
>game but I could write one in assembly, or C, or Pascal, or BASIC.

	Foof! Then what is all this noise on the net about Forth
that we hear from you? :-)

>
>For some strange reason, approximately every three years I get a hankering
>to take another shot at Forth.  It BUGS me that I have such a tough time
>with Forth--I learned APL and LISP okay and they aren't that "conventional".  
>So here I am in another of my Forth cycles.  This time, though, I have F83
>(with F-PC on the way) and the Kelly and Spies "Text and Reference" and I
>suspect I'll survive the learning curve.  Whether I'll *like* Forth or not
>I won't know for a while.  However, I *do* like a number of aspects of the
>language considerably (the modularity, the extensibility, the speed) or I
>wouldn't keep coming back to it.
>
	Now you're getting smart, Jethro ... :-)


>Here's the challenge:  Suppose your life depended on getting Forth
>established as a (reasonably) popular language.  Further suppose that you
>had considerably programming and MARKETING resources.  What would you do?

	I'd port something very much like JForth to every operating
system in the free world. Then I'd give away about 10,000 copies to
critical nodes in the programming world. And I'd advertise the
shit out of it. "Hi, I'm Jessica Hahn, and I program in Jforth!" :-)

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