Re: The Promise of Forth

On Apr 5, 6:50 am, Jonah Thomas <jethom...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
One of the original promises of Forth was that you could do everything
with it, at all levels except assembler. This appealed more to hobbyists
who didn't want to learn other languages than to professionals who
prided themselves on knowing it all. Companies who hired hobbyist Forth
programmers got pot luck -- some of them might be inspired and others no
good at all.

And note, this was not a promise of the Forth *language* but of the
original Forth *system*.

That system design is still valid in the space where it originally
excelled ... hardware without the resources to run a freestanding
general purpose OS, in settings where the ability to both run and
program on the live hardware is a strong advantage. However, the
market niches where that solution fits the problem is a constantly
moving target.

Forth system models have expanded since then, and that is now only one
of several. There is the asymetric umbilical system model, Forth as a
development language for binary executables in a host OS, Forth as a
foundation for scripting languages, Forth as a foundation scripting
interfaces for applications written in another language, Forth as a
commandline tool.
.

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