Re: so forth is useless except for limited mem environments?

On 2007-03-05, rickman <gnuarm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I meant not familiar with the program, but familiar with Forth. The
issue of whether Forth is easy to pick up if you are not familiar with
it is one that has been discussed here repeatedly and I don't wish to
open that up again. I am just addressing the native clarity of Forth
programs as written by the bulk of the community. I am not addressing
code that is intended to be optimized for size, speed or other goals
for a specific application.

Please allow this 5-6 day old Forth noob to inject an uninformed but
albeit "real" opinion.

I found John's rendition the *least* intuitive to comprehend. I found
the #1 example the most intuitive and easily understandable. OK -- this
is from a person who barely remembers the words in the Forth dictionary,
never mind understanding their function and purpose. However, even with
this temporary handicap, I could still understand the #1 snippet. I must
say that I'm a fair hand with Perl and PHP, so I'm not new to
programming -- although after lurking this group for 1 month now, I see
that I have a *lot* to learn about *good* programming.

I am not saying that John is evil, or that his code is evil. Not so! If
it works for him, that's great! But for most of us our programming
experience does not happen in a vacuum.

IMHO, if I have to reverse-engineer *any* code, whatever the language,
than you can keep it!! This obfusticated C code, or Perl on-liners give
"a pain where I can't put a window" ;) Imagine trying to maintain any
length of program written that cryptically! Imagine coming back 6-12 mos
down the road, and having to deal with this crap! A few could, no doubt.
My sense is that most would have one hell-of-a-time.

This brings up an interesting question -- should computer programs be
written "for the machine" or "for people" reading/using the program? An
extension of the former would be -- should computer programs always be
optimized for the machine? You could say: optimize the code for the
machine, but comment heavily for humans. My experience has been that
most programmers are such purists that writing meaningful comments and
docs is avoided like the plague. There are exceptions of course.

Finally, please restrain yourselves from flaming me! I have NO desire to
insult ANYBODY, and I expect the treatment in return. The above are my
opinions only, and are not meant to be disparaging to anyone or any
language. Forth ROCKS!! We all can agree on that! ;))
--
duke | A: Yes. |
| >Q: Are you sure? |
| >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. |
| >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? |
.

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