Re: doing exercises for starting forth, kinda discouraging, some are easy and some seem text not prepare me for....

From	John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: doing exercises for starting forth, kinda discouraging, some are easy and some seem text not prepare me for....
Date	2012-06-26 14:59 -0700
Organization	http://groups.google.com
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On Tuesday, June 26, 2012 9:23:27 AM UTC-4, Mark Wills wrote:
> Not at all. There's a life after work, you know. I 
> wasn't assuming that he wants to use Forth for work. 

My assumption is that the variety of things he's talked about (which independent of his employment typically veers primarily toward system administration, operations, and common scripting tasks) reflects his primary interests.

> As you say, it's not really suitable as an 
> administration language. I'm assuming he's simply
> interested in learning a programming language, rather 
> than a scripting language. 

Scripting languages aren't programming languages?  Don't make me get out my Venn diagrams...

> Of course, Forth is a good candidate for writing DSLs, 
> so Forth could be used as the back-bone of a Gavino 
> administration language, written around his exact 
> requirements.

And with enough effort and culinary skill, tofu can be made to taste like bacon.  Or, one could just eat bacon.  (If you're Vegan, substitute whatever you people from planet Vega eat.)

> Don't be so negative!

I don't think I'm being negative.  A big part of learning about programming languages isn't just the syntax or semantics, but where that language makes sense.  One can fight against the nature of a language, or one can work in harmony with it.  You want to do sophisticated string processing in Fortran?  Nobody's going to stop you, but I think there are better languages you might want to consider.  You think recoding the ignition control system of your car in Perl is a keen idea?  Go for it, but don't expect great results.

I think it's great that gavino may be moving toward more competence in Forth.  But I also fearlessly predict without any qualification that once gavino really experiences how low-level of a language Forth is, he's going to run screaming to other languages.

That's not negative.  That's a recognition-- based on the kinds of questions he asks and the applications he cites-- that he's not interested in Forth.  He thinks he's interested because he's gotten caught up in the hype of Forth.  But once he finds out that to do anything he needs to everything, he'll be running back to TCL and bash and other languages that handle all the dirty details for him.  That's not a bad thing-- picking the right tool for the job is a fundamental skill of a programmer that he hasn't learned yet.

> >It's underwear gnome economics applied to programming languages:
> 
> I have absolutely no idea what that means.

Google is your friend.  But basically, you did it in your reply.  People love to say that Forth is the ideal language for *anything* because you can bend it as you wish.  So step one is "learn Forth" and step three is "and there's your perfect language."  

What's missing is that rather critical step two.  It's usually glossed over in this newsgroup, so I welcome you to break that tradition and actually give gavino a rough estimate of how long it will take him to become competent enough in Forth to actually do what you said-- make the ideal gavino administration language.

Goals are fine.  Realistic and attainable goals are better.  

No, you don't know gavino, but assume past is prologue and come up with a realistic estimate.  Feel free to factor in that the languages he currently knows (to whatever degree he knows them) shield him from the low-level details of string processing, memory management, file manipulation, and process management).  Toss in he's using languages that automagically convert data types for him, and that offer out of the box associative arrays and other high level data structures.  And think about how much of the infrastructure he takes for granted in a programming language is part of standard libraries contributed by a large community.

Again, I think it's great gavino is trying to learn Forth.  I just think it's better to be honest and realistic with where he's likely to end up and to guide him to a deeper understanding of what makes Forth special and why that ultimately doesn't matter to the kinds of things he cares about.

Oh, and there is no Santa Claus.

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