Re: advantages of forth over other languages

John Passaniti schrieb:
> Celime wrote:
>> Todays programmings languages are so distant from Forth that it appears
>> impossible to me to explain the advantages of Forth to the young 
>> programmers.
> 
> So much of the discussion in comp.lang.forth is about Forth's 
> advantages, but I rarely see anyone talking about Forth's disadvantages.

>  Could it be the "young programmers" you are talking to fully grok 
> Forth's advantages, but they may see disadvantages that you don't?

adavantage or disadvantage is only in the eye of the beholder.
one migh argue that the most im****tant feature is to have a
garbage collecter. I was one of them. but GC is not a general
solution. because now you have to manage carefully your references
otherwise all objects hold on one. and it could be extreme
difficult to find this object. well, you might implement caching
for database object but you wouldn't that those object would
in memory all the time. such requirement are the reason why weak
references were introduced - you see.

so I decided to not make garbage in the first place.

> Could it also be that you're assuming that advantages in one domain 
> equates to advantages in another?  Forth is a great language for 
> embedded systems.  That doesn't mean that Forth is necessarily a great 
> language for web-based applications.

Forth is a language or better a concept to express the solution
to any given problem. it's free in all directions, so I didn't see
why other languages (say PHP, Perl, Jave) should be better. one have
to master this freedom - this is probably one of the worst disadvantages
of forth. in order to write successful programs in Forth one have
to switch on his brain.

> Another question:  Many times in comp.lang.forth we see Forth compared 
> to "other languages."  But in reality, there is rarely a comparison to 
> "other languages."  Usually the comparison is with C,

I gave examples to Smalltalk and Java, where I have worked successfully
for many years.

> ignoring the much 
> larger universe of languages out there.  And certainly, when comparing 
> Forth and C, there are a number of advantages.  But when you start 
> looking outside C, some of the features that were traditionally seen as 
> unique in Forth are actually common.

don't forget to compare the price for those features compared to
other languages. how expensive is lexical scoping in lisp, compared to
forth, where you simply use the stack.


I don't see your problem. you are lucky, you know about forth. you
know how to work with and you probably know about other languages
as well. take this experience to write better and simpler programs
in any language you must use and bring more comfort to your
development system. I for me did it.

best wishes
Andreas Klimas