Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!dwp
From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Forth (was: Why don't people use Forth...)
Message-ID: <240.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 90 18:28:18 GMT
References: <6001@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <756@noe.UUCP> <95.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP> <3084@plains.UUCP> <231.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Organization: Latest Link in ForthNet Chain (Pittsburgh, PA)
Lines: 54

In <6001@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, john wavrik writes:
<We've changed Forth in the past 10 years. Have we changed it from a language
<in which simple pieces fit together in a strong and beautiful way to something 
<which looks like a desert?  If so, we should all be *very* concerned.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, if you think a
desert is such a bad place to be like!  ;-)  A desert is full of sand
that can be piled and molded and shaped to suit your desires, and it
can as easily be re-<all those things>.  Its most permanent feature
is its adaptability.  I don't disagree with your 'strong and beautiful'
assesment, perhaps I'm just saying that Forth's strengths and beauties
are different from most other languages, and as such the casual
observer/novice is going to be looking in the wrong places for the wrong
things.
[I have a feeling that I'm not expressing myself too well, so I'll leave
it at this for now.]

<>[Doug Philips wrote:]
<>If Forth is declining in the few niches it has, perhaps it is because C's
<>"bus route" has finally been put in, Ada's steamship now has a port of
<>call.  If Forth is a frontierman's language, where is the frontier?
<
<Here the problem is in assuming that Forth is trying to do what other 
<languages do and go the same places that other languages go. Anyone who wants 
<to go where the bus goes should take the bus! 

That isn't what I was trying to say.  The problem is that the buses are
finding it profitable to put in lines where it hadn't been profitable
to put them in before.  What were once the refuges of the frontiersman
are now becoming the tourist traps of the bus tours.  The frontiersman
hasn't changed.  Perhaps the wilderness has.  It isn't as hostile as it
used to be, nor as inaccesible to other forms of traffic.  [If embedded
systems can cheaply provide the resources for C's bus lines, then they
aren't the same kind of embedded systems that they were.]  It isn't
'frontier' anymore.  The frontier has moved.

It strikes me as amazing that, given Forth's adapability, it wouldn't have
found other niches over a 10 year period (to use your time frame).  I
get the impression that despite all the other changes in the computer
industry, Forth is like a little kid refusing to grow up.  The world is
always changing.  Forth is, seemingly, ideally suited to track change and
adapt with it, to 'follow the frontier'.  Where is Forth going?
Its following the frontier!  And where is the frontier?

Will there always be a frontier?  Is the frontier shrinking/vanishing?
If so, what then of Forth?

[I think is clearer, but what do I know!]

		-Doug

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