On Mar 11, 3:34=A0am, Andrew Haley <andre...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> John Doty <j...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Andrew Haley wrote:
> >> John Doty <j...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> >>> Please leave the argument in place. To snip here is evasion.
>
> >>> My argument is:
>
> >>> 1. There is little published shareable Forth code, relative to other
> >>> languages. This seems beyond dispute.
>
> >> Relative to which other languages? =A0
> >> Per user, or per language?
>
> >>> 2. You and others asserted that this is not because Forth code is
> >>> not shareable, but because shareable code is proprietary, and that
> >>> there is plenty of such code.
>
> >>> This requires that somehow Forth, unlike other programming
> >>> languages, produces shareable code only if code is not to be
> >>> published.
>
> >> No it doesn't. =A0This conclusion does not follow from the premises.
>
> >> All that is necessary is for the language mostly to be used in
> >> proprietary applications. =A0COBOL isn't so different.
> > COBOL is very different. COBOL is a highly specialized language,
> > useless in most applications, including the kinds people
> > publish.
>
> ? =A0Highly specialized? =A0COBOL?
>
> > But Forthers, including me, claim Forth is radically flexible. So
> > what restricts Forth to proprietary applications?
>
> I think that the issue of lingua franca has already been discussed:
> for use in most free software projects, a language has to be
> understood by many and widely available. =A0Thus, any minority language
> will have a hard time unless its advantages are very great. =A0C is not
> the best language for most of the areas in which it is used.
>
> Forth has greater advantages when it's not tied to a lumbering beast
> of an operating system. =A0This is when Forth really sings. =A0Also,
> Forth's *margin of advantage* in embedded control projects is greater
> than when it's just another language running a desktop program on a
> general-purpose computer.
>
> Regardless of whether this is true or not, your conclusion does not
> follow from the premises.
>
> Andrew.
A nice environment for Forth would be as a scripting language inside
of gdb, especially when used to debug embedded systems over some kind
of umbilical.
Ian
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