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From: wmb@sun.uucp (Mitch Bradley)
Newsgroups: net.jokes,net.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth from the Stone Age?
Message-ID: <1885@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 16-Dec-84 21:04:02 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.1885
Posted: Sun Dec 16 21:04:02 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Dec-84 02:21:57 EST
References: <45@mot.UUCP> <6810@watdaisy.UUCP> <1807@umcp-cs.UUCP> <6819@watdaisy.UUCP>
Reply-To: wmb@sun.UUCP (Mitch Bradley)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 26
Xref: watmath net.jokes:9963 net.lang.forth:189

> Why will no-one consider the possibility of using 10-year-old hardware --
> they always insist on using the latest, 5-year-old hardware -- but they are
> perfectly happy using languages that are 20 years old?

I don't want to cause a big argument about this, but I do want to voice
a contrary opinion.  Personally, I like Forth, and frequently chose to
use it in preference to C.  And please, don't think I don't know C well
enough; I used C extensively for 3 years *before* I learned Forth, and
vigorously promoted the use of C at the company I worked at before Sun.

Forth is interactive and extensible, two features that I like very much,
and which are lacking from C.  I find that I can write and debug
non-trivial programs much faster in Forth than in C, precisely because
it is interactive.  I don't like the Forth "screen" concept (source
code is usually kept in 16 line x 64 column format), so I edit my
source code in normal Unix files with Emacs.

As a point of information, Forth is not 20 years old.  It was developed
about the same time as C.  Lisp, however, is 20 years old, and it is
actively being used as the language of choice by much of the AI community,
who like to think of themselves as the cutting edge of computer science.
So, I would claim that newer is not necessarily better, regardless of
the fact the Forth isn't old anyway.

Cheers,
Mitch Bradley (honk, honk)