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From: marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Why don't people use Forth (was Re: FIG Membership cost)
Message-ID: <756@noe.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 90 08:34:23 GMT
References: <95.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP> <3084@plains.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@noe.UUCP
Reply-To: marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot)
Organization: Noe Systems, San Francisco
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In article <3084@plains.UUCP> overby@plains.UUCP (Glen Overby) writes:
>So why don't academics use Forth?  Well, it doesn't *come with* things like
>data structures (or something that resembles a Pascal record or C struct).
>Forth also doesn't have some facility for Object Oriented Programming *built
>in*.  Yes, half of OOP is how you actually write the program, but Forth
>doesn't have anything to FORCE you to do things a certain way.  Thats good
>and bad (the same can be said about C).

Yup.  Forth requires another way of thinking about programming.  Nothing
in Forth is cast in stone, which is frightening to programmers who expect
that.  It takes a *long* time to get used to the fact that you can do
it yourself; just 'cuz it ain't supplied don't mean you can't have it.

Another way in which one's thinking about programming needs to change:
the reserved word set in other languages fixed, and is easily committed
to memory.  One needs to develop different memory skills to remember word
names when those names are used the way the reserved word set is used in 
other languages.

^M
-- 
Marc de Groot (KG6KF)         |"...few people know what to do with a computer.
Noe Systems, San Francisco    | They decide that running an operating system
UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc  | is a substitute for doing productive work."
Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG | -Chuck Moore