On May 3, 3:44 am, Aleksej Saushev <a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > ... which is that 5% that is used out of the library may not be
> > the same 5% each time, and rather than having a Swiss Army knife
> > toolkit that does so many different things to a certain extent
> > that it does nothing very well, this does offer the opportunity
> > to craft the tool to the precise needs of the moment.
> > However, even if I follow the strong implication of your statement,
> > Aleksej, that it is often desirable to write the code from scratch,
> > I still must insist that having that library would be handy for RAD.
> The rapid development is another frequent point of Forth proponents,
> let's see: string processing, list processing (if you sacrifice
> performance to speed of development, if not, add balanced trees
> and/or other more complex structures), networking, database
> connection (even simple one, Berkeley-style). Pretty many of
> usual things, you have to deal with _from_scratch_.
Well, not have to. However, as appealing an argument as you present
for doing it from scratch, I continue to argue that a common library
oversight system to support easier contribution into and easier
borrowing from common libraries of the above is superior to what you
are sketching here.
And what you argue here is not quite true ... certainly I can see from
your perspective, where the ideal to strive for is reinventing the
wheel each time, that you might idealize the position of Forth to be
one where everyone reinvents the wheel all the time. However, Forth
actually falls well short of your ideal in that regard. Many people
who use Forth on a regular basis enjoy quite substantial existing
libraries of Forth source for quite a range of functions, which come
bundled with the Forth compilers from the main Forth compiler vendors.
However, you are quite accurate in one regard. It *is* far easier to
escape the straightjacket of general regular *expressions*, and
process regular textual patterns directly, when you have a situation
that enough people were required to re-invent the same wheel enough
times to avoid that particular cul-de-sac. Good catch on that one.
> _This_ is the price you pay for not having those "5%".
So its fortunate that "not having that 5%" is mere hyperbole ... your
ideal of a Forth programmer inventing everything from scratch, as
opposed to reality.
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