Re: How "scalable" is forth?


casioculture@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~mvanier/hacking/rants/scalable_computer_programming_languages.html

He doesn't mention forth. :-/

Perhaps it's just as well. If you consider the features that the author
thinks makes a scalable language he would have condemned it:

- garbage collection
- no pointers or pointer arithmetic
- a foreign function interface to the C language
- static type checking with type inference
- support for exception handling
- run-time error checking for errors that can't be caught at compile
time, like array bounds violations and division by zero
- support for assertions and design by contract
- a powerful, statically checked module system
- support for object-oriented programming
- support for functional programming
- structural macros
- support for components
- a simple, consistent and readable syntax

Of these surely ANS Forth only features exception handling (the last
feature could be arguable). Of course many of these can be added to
Forth but the author is talking about the defined language, not
extensions.

But can you place much credence in someone who is forthright and
dogmatic about languages only to change his mind after using 2 of them
in a large project.

.

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