Re: Why forth is not popular

The Beez' wrote:

4/5) We still stress too much that it is so nice that "Forth is
interactive" and "You can test a word at the time" and "If you made an
error, you execute your marker, make changes to your definition and run
it again". Most people don't work that way anymore. Even most people
here responded they write a file, test it, exit the compiler, make
changes to their code and run the beast again.

An awful development paradigm, pretty much like what we used to do back in the days of punched cards. We've replaced the operator who loaded your deck with a mouse click, but the process is pretty much the same. Why stick to an obsolete approach? I'd rather not.

There is not much
difference of how we work and how ordinary IDE's work!

About the only modern IDE that isn't a time waster is Mathematica's "Notebook" front end. It makes it very easy to build up a program from small definitions, testing as you go. Sound familiar?

Note that most programmers (at least the old ones) remember Forth from
their Spectrums, C64, etc. They remember the horrors of block files,
black screens and reloads.

I don't remember blocks as horrible, and I came to Forth from Multics, which had a more sophisticated file system than many 21st century systems (ACL's, ring brackets, ...). Just had to adjust work habits a bit, no big problem. Reload of Forth on a micro took less time than recompilation of a PL/I program on a timeshared mainframe.

I guess it comes to stressing new users that
Forth isn't Forth-of-the-eighties anymore. Most people I know still
regard it that way.
BTW, I so seldom use a debugger that I haven't installed gdb on my 2
year old PC yet. In my time there were no interactive debuggers, only
printf().

I used to use right-handed cards for the regular source, lefties for inserted debugging code. Made it easy to find and remove the debugging stuff: just look for corners sticking out ;-)

6) Executables are still better regarded than scripts. It is considered
much fancier, especially by Windows people. I must admit that Perl has
had its way, but Perl doesn't claim to be a compiler. Most people would
consider Forth to be more of an interpreter than a compiler. I've even
seen someone who taught a certain free Forth was crippleware since it
couldn't produce a compilant.

Forth is most useful for those who focus on application requirements, not pet techniques.

---
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
---
His diagnosis of the hostility ... reflects the willful blindness of the invader who assures himself that the natives are only made unfriendly by some other provocation than his own. -Barbara W. Tuchman
.

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