Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!ForthNet
From: ForthNet@willett.UUCP (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth Taught at Schools/Universities
Message-ID: <244.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 90 01:28:46 GMT
Organization: Latest Link in ForthNet Chain (Pittsburgh, PA)
Lines: 34


 Date: 01-09-90 (09:52)              Number: 1642 (Echo)
   To: GARY-S                        Refer#: 1619
 From: PETE KOZIAR                     Read: NO
 Subj: FORTH IN ACADEMIA             Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE

 I must throw my two cents in as to why I don't think FORTH is taught in 
 Universities: 

 1. "C" actually has a lot of roots in other academic languages, even 
 going back as far as ALGOL-60.  The control structures, etc. are 
 similar. 

 2. When I was in school, there was a lot of emphasis on the dead-end of 
 "proof of correctness." (don't get me started on why I think it is a 
 dead-end; here's my summary on the matter: just because a program can 
 be proven to match the spec proves nothing in the real world outside of 
 opsys or compiler development.  The vast majority of solving the 
 problem consists of understanding the problem well enough despite the 
 specification)  A great deal of the work on "proof of correctness" has 
 been done on the Algol-like family (C, Pascal, Bliss, etc.). 

 3. Bell Labs basically "gave" Unix away in the early 70's to 
 universities.  "C" was there, it was available, and it was similar 
 enough to other structured languages (like Algol) to be easily 
 learnable. 

 I once stopped back in the Hopkins bookstore (my alma mater).  Not one 
 book on FORTH.  Not one.  Think about it. 
 ---
  * Via Qwikmail 2.01  The Baltimore Sun 
-----
This message came from GEnie via willett through a semi-automated process.
Report problems to: 'uunet!willett!dwp' or 'willett!dwp@gateway.sei.cmu.edu'