Re: advantages of forth over other languages

John Doty wrote:
> Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
>> John Doty wrote:
>>> John Passaniti wrote:
....
>>> 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.

Well, I won't attempt to remotely judge folks you've known if you'll 
refrain from judging people you've never met, whom I have worked with 
for years and have seen successfully design and implement both hardware 
and software in a number of fields.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

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Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310-491-3356
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Hawthorne, CA 90250
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
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