Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!sumax!ole!thebes!mtk!marmar
From: marmar@mtk.UUCP (Mark Martino)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth Popularity
Message-ID: <937@mtk.UUCP>
Date: 27 Dec 89 16:40:36 GMT
Reply-To: marmar@mtk.UUCP (Mark Martino)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Mannesmann Tally, Kent, WA 98032
Lines: 44
Summary: Not an oxymoron

I guess it might be in the eye of the beholder, but I found Forth easier
to learn than BASIC and definitely easier than C.  C is deceptive in
that learning the syntax and operators of the language doesn't seem to
be enough.  Even after four years of using it along with assembly
language, I still get tripped up on standard I/O, compiler jokes,
include files, and, my favorite, "idioms".  These last items seem to be
almost operators, but not quite.  Someone always seems to be introducing
a new collection of C operators, calling it an idiom, and insisting that
it's so useful it's almost part of the language.

Forth does have a lot of words, but I found learning how to use them
fairly painless.  At the risk of seeming a churlish dolt, I found it a lot
easier to understand Forth words than to sort out the subtleties of C
syntax.

"Vast amounts of memory" is one of my favorite boondongles.  Although
the cost and availability of memory keeps going up, except for Forth,
every new innovation in software demands more memory than most people
can afford.  It's kind of like saying, "Why are you complaining that
cars cost $12,000?  Look at how much more efficient they are and look at
all the swell gadgets that weren't available  before!"  Well, personally,
$12,000 is still a big bite for me.  All "vast amounts of memory" has
done for me is put powerful applications even further from my financial
grasp.

Forth could easily be the language of the people because it is easy for
non-techs to learn and because you can, even though nobody has yet,
build a cheap system with it.  Less memory usage means less memory
management and less disk access and less memory hardware.  As I've said
before, a properly marketed, inexpensive and easy-to-understand, personal
computer running Forth will make a lot of money and will make Forth the
language for everybody.

Forth can be to software what day-to-day arithmetic is to mathematics,
something that everyone can learn and use in everyday life.  This would
have happened sooner, but C, Pascal, Lisp, and even PostScript have one thing
that Forth has not yet achieved, acceptance by the educational community.
I don't know that it ever will because it's just too simple.  The
academics I've talked to and the professionals I've worked with seem to
believe that if one doesn't need formal training in software to make use of a
language, it can't possibly be useful.

A cheap Forth computer can do an end run around this attitude and I
think the world will better for it.