Re: The Promise of Forth

Bruce McFarling wrote:
On Apr 2, 3:26 pm, Jonah Thomas <jethom...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Like, there's a lot of luck in poker but poker players say it isn't a
game of chance. If you have a flaw in your poker strategy and your
opponents do not, eventually you will lose even if you get more than
your share of lucky hands. Similarly, if Forth has something
fundamentally wrong with it then it couldn't become popular even if lots
of people tried it -- most of them would put it aside. And if Forth was
a thousand times better than anything else it would have a very good
chance to become popular even with some bad breaks.

And to take the analogy further, if your strategy is flawless but your
execution is flawed ... if you have, for instance, a tell that another
poker player has picked up ... you can still lose a bucketload of
money playing poker.

To shift to the closest analogy, the competitive fringe of an
oligopoly with a competitive fringe may well include firms that might
have been one of the oligopolists had they played their hands better
at the critical time. That does not mean that *every* firm in the
competitive fringe is an "oligopolist in exile".

And more to the point of the current position of Forth looking
forward, there is no necessary connection between being either an
*actual* or a *prior potential* oligopolist in one industry and
*becoming* an oligopolist in a newly established industry.

While the leaders of a wave of innovation tend to come from marginal
rivals to the dominant incumbents, there are a large number of
marginal rivals, and only a very few of them will be in the leading
edge of the next wave of innovation.

Bruce, if you believe Forth's sorry situation is a consequence of irreversible and/or unknowable factors, why do you bother with this conversation at all? It doesn't concern you. This conversation is for optimists who have hope that something might still be salvaged of Forth's beautiful ideas.

--
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
--
History teaches that logical consistency is neither sufficient nor necessary to establish practical, real world truth. Those who attempt to use logic for that purpose are abusing it.
.

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