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From: ndiamond@watdaisy.UUCP (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: net.jokes,net.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Forth from the Stone Age?
Message-ID: <6819@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 20:26:55 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6819
Posted: Thu Dec 13 20:26:55 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Dec-84 06:18:31 EST
References: <45@mot.UUCP> <6810@watdaisy.UUCP>, <1807@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 37
Xref: watmath net.jokes:9907 net.lang.forth:187

Charley Wingate writes:
> For an 8-bit micro, there simply were no civilized languages with sufficient
> power (unless you think 8080 assembly is civilized :-)); there are hardly any
> now.
> ...
> I suspect that the I/O package for most FORTRANs (dare I mention PL/I?) is
> considerably larger than the Forth COMPILER would be on the same machine.
> ...
> "Forth-- Stay to here is that language a"

There are people who regard PL/M as a civilized language.  (I am not one.)
Of course, I haven't met a civilized language yet, though some languages
incorporate some civilized features.

Also don't forget, Fortran I/O packages are often larger than even Fortran
compilers.  Of course, any language that doesn't offer run-time support will
not require its libraries to be as large as its compilers.

But of course, Forth is here to stay, as are Fortran and PL/I and APL and
Cobol and Basic (and now to move on to those that are only 75% flawed) C and
Pascal and Ada.

This discussion no longer seems appropriate for net.jokes ... all I wished to
do in my previous submission was to anti-honk, and perhaps we should move to
net.jokes.d ... but first, one observation:

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?

-- Norman Diamond

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"Opinions are those of the keyboard, and do not reflect on me or higher-ups."