Re: How "scalable" is forth?

GerryJ wrote:


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.

Quite a lot of that list could be achieved in Forth but, really, why would
anyone need to. The largest programming task I have ever seen was a
collection of small programmes that cooperated.

--
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Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
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