Re: advantages of forth over other languages

John Doty wrote:
Was Forth ever widely understood by programmers? Most Forthers I've actually known have been scientists or engineers.

That old theme again. You must come from that generation where people were specialists and stayed in their narrowly-defined roles for their entire career. I'm glad I don't, and I'm glad the vast majority of the people I work with don't. Maybe in your industry people are strictly defined by "programmer" and "scientist" and "engineer." But most people I know are hyphenated-- they may primarily be a scientist, but they also have strong programming skills. Or they might be an electrical engineer, but also be conversant in the world of programming. I started the other way, starting off as a programmer and moving more towards electrical engineering.

But this is nothing new-- we've talked about this before, and I've been deeply thankful that the kind of regimented professional roles you seem to observe in your work don't apply universally.

Regarding knowing Forth, it may be a geographic thing, but here in Rochester, New York, it's hard to talk to a local experienced programmer who doesn't know about Forth. They may not be actively using it professionally, but they know Forth.

I also have seen programmers who know Forth without... knowing Forth. Most of the recent graduates may not know the syntax, common idioms, and best practices of Forth, but they certainly understand the components that make up Forth, understand how it works, and can appreciate the essential qualities of it. This comes out in various ways; I see it most often in job interviews.

My company currently has a position open and I usually conduct technical interviews for software engineers. One of the questions I often ask during such interviews is what languages the candidate knows. The point of the question is to determine the breadth of the candidate. If for example they answer "C, Pascal, BASIC" then I know they are probably only conversant in imperative, procedural ALGOL-esque languages. If they answer "C, Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell, Java, Prolog" that says something completely different. And if they toss in VHDL or Verilog in there, it at least suggests even more. Further questions then might go into how deeply they know these languages.

The candidate I interviewed had a good grasp of both procedural and functional languages, and so I asked if he knew Forth. He stated he didn't, but was interested. So I gave a brief overview and then turned it around-- I asked him to describe the essential qualities of Forth based on what I just described. He got the major themes: imperative, procedural, deals with raw addresses so probably low abstraction levels, dictionary and interpreter means interactive and extensible, untyped, and so on.

Obviously, this doesn't mean he could sit down and start writing Forth code. But it does mean that if properly introduced, he wouldn't have a problem picking it up and eventually being proficient in it.
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: advantages of forth over other languages
    ... actually known have been scientists or engineers. ... but also be conversant in the world of programming. ... interviews for software engineers. ... only conversant in imperative, procedural ALGOL-esque languages. ...
    (comp.lang.forth)
  • Re: advantages of forth over other languages
    ... actually known have been scientists or engineers. ... You must come from that generation where people were specialists and stayed in their narrowly-defined roles for their entire career. ... I know are hyphenated-- they may primarily be a scientist, but they also have strong programming skills. ... If for example they answer "C, Pascal, BASIC" then I know they are probably only conversant in imperative, procedural ALGOL-esque languages. ...
    (comp.lang.forth)
  • Re: As a matter of interest
    ... among pretty much the entire programming community, a reputation for writing ... books were very clear and pleasant to read. ... it gets this by going through civil engineers. ...
    (comp.lang.c.moderated)
  • Re: Is "Whidbey" going to de-skill developers ?
    ... India with engineers who produce above par code. ... > they send is swiped off programming Websites I frequently visit. ... They are graduating more ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp)
  • Re: Is FORTRAN a dying language? (not a troll)
    ... Fortran appears to have a smaller market share than it used ... aren't immensely involved in the needs of engineers and scientists and others ... very large reason to go with a language which is as easy to learn and ... are simply because they had an intro programming course in school. ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
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