Re: advantages of forth over other languages

Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
> 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.

I've known programmers who *thought* they had the domain knowledge 
necessary, but didn't, and refused to do the studying necessary to 
really obtain it. And a Forth-only programmer is surely an *extremely* 
narrow specialist.

-- 
John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
--
Specialization is for robots.