Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!hjm From: hjm@cernvax.UUCP (hjm) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Forth "Pre-Compiler" (long) Message-ID: <798@cernvax.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 88 15:54:51 GMT References: <8808032106.AA01436@jade.berkeley.edu> <1563@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <2651@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1567@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Reply-To: hjm@cernvax.UUCP () Organization: CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland Lines: 26 OK, Laxen & Perry = 8, Orr = 53. Mr. Orr, are you sure more is better? You assume that because you need 53 tools to program in C, then others must require 53 tools to program in X, Y or FORTH. If these tools were necessary for FORTH programming, do you not think that someone would have written them? To me, the most important idea in computing is Occam's Razor: keep it as simple as possible. I loath the inflated operating systems of the world, just as much as I detest the unnecessary complication that most of the computing world revels in. If 8 tools do all that is needed in 26KB, then great! That's (12 Mb - 26 Kb) *less* code that has to be written. Less code means writ- ten quicker, which means cheaper systems for me to play with. How much do you pay for your compiler/support tools/windows/cute menus and the like? A lot. UNIX, VMS, MVS and the like? Too big, too expensive, too inflexible. And how many latent bugs are there in that 12 Mb of code? Small = fast = cheap = efficient = flexible = intelligible = us- able = provable = less bug ridden = more maintainable = ... (need I say more?) Hubert Matthews