Re: advantages of forth over other languages

John Doty wrote:
> John Passaniti wrote:
>> John Doty wrote:
>>> Was Forth ever widely understood by programmers? Most Forthers I've 
>>> actually known have been scientists or engineers.
>>
>> That old theme again.  You must come from that generation where people 
>> were specialists and stayed in their narrowly-defined roles for their 
>> entire career.  I'm glad I don't, and I'm glad the vast majority of 
>> the people I work with don't.  Maybe in your industry people are 
>> strictly defined by "programmer" and "scientist" and "engineer."  But 
>> most people I know are hyphenated-- they may primarily be a scientist, 
>> but they also have strong programming skills.  Or they might be an 
>> electrical engineer, but also be conversant in the world of 
>> programming.  I started the other way, starting off as a programmer 
>> and moving more towards electrical engineering.
> 
> Most programmers I've known just do programming. But lots of others do 
> programming.
> 
>> But this is nothing new-- we've talked about this before, and I've 
>> been deeply thankful that the kind of regimented professional roles 
>> you seem to observe in your work don't apply universally.
> 
> You misunderstand what I'm trying to say. To me, a "programmer" is a 
> narrow specialist by choice. It's like being a writer. But lots of 
> people write without being "writers", and lots of people program without

> being "programmers". Forth was once the language for those.

I believe you use the term "programmer" rather differently from the way 
John and I and most others here do.  Certainly my experience is the same 
as John's: most of our customers (and, indeed, our staff as well) are 
people with significant expertise in other fields (typically various 
fields of science and engineering, including related skills such as 
design of electronic components) who also do a lot of programming.  In 
fact, I don't know *any* programmers who are narrow specialists or write 
software without understanding the application domain in which it will 
be used.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

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Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310-491-3356
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