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Top 3 implementations?

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  Top 3 implementations? Tarkin <tarkin000@gmail.com> - 2012-04-27 08:46 -0700
    Re: Top 3 implementations? Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-04-27 11:02 -0700
      Re: Top 3 implementations? quiet_lad <gavcomedy@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 11:10 -0700
    Re: Top 3 implementations? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-03 02:15 -0700
    Re: Top 3 implementations? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-03 02:15 -0700
      Re: Top 3 implementations? Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-05-03 18:45 +0200
        Re: Top 3 implementations? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-05-03 08:01 -1000
          Re: Top 3 implementations? Rugxulo <rugxulo@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 11:15 -0700
            Re: Top 3 implementations? Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2012-05-04 23:53 +0200
              Re: Top 3 implementations? vandys@vsta.org - 2012-05-04 22:28 +0000
                Re: Top 3 implementations? Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2012-05-05 13:09 +0200
                  Re: Top 3 implementations? Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201205.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-05-06 04:09 +0200
              Re: Top 3 implementations? Tarkin <tarkin000@gmail.com> - 2012-05-07 08:23 -0700
              Re: Top 3 implementations? hwfwguy@gmail.com - 2012-05-07 10:22 -0700
              Re: Top 3 implementations? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-05-08 13:41 -0700
                Re: Top 3 implementations? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-05-08 11:07 -1000
                  Re: Top 3 implementations? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-05-08 14:26 -0700
                    Re: Top 3 implementations? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-05-08 12:07 -1000
                    Re: Top 3 implementations? Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-05-09 02:45 -0500
                      Re: Top 3 implementations? "Harry Vaderchi" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2012-05-09 09:15 +0100
            Re: Top 3 implementations? Tarkin <tarkin000@gmail.com> - 2012-05-07 08:20 -0700
          Re: Top 3 implementations? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-10 04:50 -0700
            Re: Top 3 implementations? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-05-15 10:45 +0000
              Re: Top 3 implementations? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-05-15 23:58 -0700
                Re: Top 3 implementations? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-19 20:36 -0700
                  Re: Top 3 implementations? Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2012-05-20 21:41 +0000
                    Re: Top 3 implementations? "A. K." <akk@nospam.org> - 2012-05-21 00:55 +0200
                    Re: Top 3 implementations? Hugh Aguilar <hughaguilar96@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-20 22:26 -0700
                      Re: Top 3 implementations? hwfwguy@gmail.com - 2012-05-22 10:20 -0700
        Re: Top 3 implementations? quiet_lad <gavcomedy@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 11:08 -0700

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#11692 — Top 3 implementations?

Hello,
  Some light googling hasn't really turned up anything.

  Wikipedia lists SwiftForth, VFX, and gForth, which jibes with my
gut.

 Opinions? Statistics?

Thanks,
  Tarkin

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#11695

That sounds about right to me, though not necessarily in that order.






On Apr 27, 4:46 pm, Tarkin <tarkin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>   Some light googling hasn't really turned up anything.
>
>   Wikipedia lists SwiftForth, VFX, and gForth, which jibes with my
> gut.
>
>  Opinions? Statistics?
>
> Thanks,
>   Tarkin

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#11876

On Apr 27, 11:02 am, Mark Wills <markrobertwi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> That sounds about right to me, though not necessarily in that order.
>
> On Apr 27, 4:46 pm, Tarkin <tarkin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hello,
> >   Some light googling hasn't really turned up anything.
>
> >   Wikipedia lists SwiftForth, VFX, and gForth, which jibes with my
> > gut.
>
> >  Opinions? Statistics?
>
> > Thanks,
> >   Tarkin

what about PFE?

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#11840

On Apr 27, 9:46 am, Tarkin <tarkin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>   Some light googling hasn't really turned up anything.
>
>   Wikipedia lists SwiftForth, VFX, and gForth, which jibes with my
> gut.
>
>  Opinions? Statistics?
>
> Thanks,
>   Tarkin

Don't buy SwiftForth.

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#11841

On Apr 27, 9:46 am, Tarkin <tarkin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>   Some light googling hasn't really turned up anything.
>
>   Wikipedia lists SwiftForth, VFX, and gForth, which jibes with my
> gut.
>
>  Opinions? Statistics?
>
> Thanks,
>   Tarkin

Don't buy SwiftForth.

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#11865

Hugh Aguilar wrote:
> Don't buy SwiftForth.

You should rather sell him your copy, to get your money back ;-).

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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#11874

On 5/3/12 6:45 AM, Bernd Paysan wrote:
> Hugh Aguilar wrote:
>> Don't buy SwiftForth.
>
> You should rather sell him your copy, to get your money back ;-).
>

Hugh's copy is 10 years old, and hopelessly obsolete.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

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#11877

Hi,

On May 3, 1:01 pm, "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erat...@forth.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/12 6:45 AM, Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> > Hugh Aguilar wrote:
> >> Don't buy SwiftForth.
>
> > You should rather sell him your copy, to get your money back ;-).
>
> Hugh's copy is 10 years old, and hopelessly obsolete.

Bwahahaha! I was wondering why nobody jumped on this thread. Even I
several times wanted to post something ridiculous and sarcastic (no
offense intended).

Four out of five angry cab drivers agree:  SwiftForth "sucks!"

ER, your sig is so huge that I was also going to say something like,
"SwiftForth? Never heard of it. If only it had a website, phone
number, someone to contact. It's not like they've been around for
decades! Where will we find them?"

On a serious note, Top 3 in what way? Cost, features, platforms,
standards, ??? So it's all personal choice, basically. We could all
name dozens of Forths. I'm surprised Win32Forth wasn't mentioned (but
he did arbitrarily limit to "Top 3").

So let's make a Top Ten, in random order, in regards to
implementations by frequent contributors to comp.lang.forth:

GForth
SwiftForth
MPE / VFX
DX-Forth
4tH
iForth
kForth
Win32Forth
ciForth
CHForth
bigForth
Pygmy
CamelForth
colorForth
minForth

Oops, that's way more than 10, and I'm still forgetting some,
probably. You could just ask people what they use, but that wouldn't
be exhaustive either. (It doesn't really matter, obviously.)

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#11927

Rugxulo wrote:
> Bwahahaha! I was wondering why nobody jumped on this thread. Even I
> several times wanted to post something ridiculous and sarcastic (no
> offense intended).
BECAUSE IT'S RIDICULOUS! It's like the competition "Who has the biggest one
on Tonga"? Ok, let's get the ruler.

I have about 30 subscriptions in Freecode. RetroForth almost twice as many.
But that's NOTHING compared to Gambas, who has <gosh> ALMOST 140
SUBSCRIPTIONS. If we investigate gForth and others.. nowhere to be found.

Let's get back one step: who's ever seen a Gambas program? I haven't..

The last time I saw an article in a mainstream Linux magazine was when they
did a series on "esoteric programming languages". Ohloh didn't even LIST
Forth until a week or so ago and even now they can't detect the language
properly.

Companies are afraid of me writing Forth code because they're only a handful
of programmers in Holland who can even READ it, let alone MAINTAIN it. And
half of them haven't left the eighties and are still playing with 16-bit
processors and make LEDS blink.

We're DEAD. We just don't know it yet.

Hans Bezemer

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#11929

Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> wrote:
> We're DEAD. We just don't know it yet.

More accurately, Forth is somewhere between the PDP-8 and the PDP-11 in terms
of its downward trajectory.  It's still out there, and there are even jobs to
be had doing it.  But not as many as there were 10 years ago, and more than
there will be in another 10 years.

(None of these comments are directed towards Mr. Moore's work--it's brilliant
and I don't feel competent to comment on how it might do in the world.)

-- 
Andy Valencia
Home page: http://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: http://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

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#11935

vandys@vsta.org wrote:
> (None of these comments are directed towards Mr. Moore's work--it's
> brilliant and I don't feel competent to comment on how it might do in the
> world.)
I second that motion. I still do most of my programming in 4tH. I use C only
when updating 4tH itself ;-) I think it's the most brilliant programming
language around - it's so easy to understand. But it's not anything for the
masses, it seems.

Hans Bezemer

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#11943

Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> wrote:

> vandys@vsta.org wrote:
> > (None of these comments are directed towards Mr. Moore's work--it's
> > brilliant and I don't feel competent to comment on how it might do in the
> > world.)
> I second that motion. I still do most of my programming in 4tH. I use C only
> when updating 4tH itself ;-) I think it's the most brilliant programming
> language around - it's so easy to understand. But it's not anything for the
> masses, it seems.

That's probably the biggest proof you actually accomplished something.

Most of what is good never succeeds commercially and most of what succeeds
commercially isn't any good. That's not always true but it's true most of
the time.

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#11959

On May 4, 5:53 pm, Hans Bezemer <the.beez.spe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rugxulo wrote:
> > Bwahahaha! I was wondering why nobody jumped on this thread. Even I
> > several times wanted to post something ridiculous and sarcastic (no
> > offense intended).
>
> BECAUSE IT'S RIDICULOUS! It's like the competition "Who has the biggest one
> on Tonga"? Ok, let's get the ruler.
>
> I have about 30 subscriptions in Freecode. RetroForth almost twice as many.
> But that's NOTHING compared to Gambas, who has <gosh> ALMOST 140
> SUBSCRIPTIONS. If we investigate gForth and others.. nowhere to be found.
>
> Let's get back one step: who's ever seen a Gambas program? I haven't..
>
> The last time I saw an article in a mainstream Linux magazine was when they
> did a series on "esoteric programming languages". Ohloh didn't even LIST
> Forth until a week or so ago and even now they can't detect the language
> properly.
>
> Companies are afraid of me writing Forth code because they're only a handful
> of programmers in Holland who can even READ it, let alone MAINTAIN it. And
> half of them haven't left the eighties and are still playing with 16-bit
> processors and make LEDS blink.
>
> We're DEAD. We just don't know it yet.
>
> Hans Bezemer

There may be a glimmer of hope in X11 and/or CGI...
Embedded webservers...
Diagnostic terminals, perhaps using framebuffer or XCB...

TTFN,
  Tarkin

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#11961

On Friday, May 4, 2012 2:53:35 PM UTC-7, The Beez wrote:
> We're DEAD. We just don't know it yet.
> 
Like Bruce Willis in "The Sixth Sense"?

It could be that the few of us left are keeping the lights on until the Forth Renaissance.

How do you measure the usage of a language that's so simple that its users don't have to ask any questions?

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#11999

Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> writes:
> The last time I saw an article in a mainstream Linux magazine was when they
> did a series on "esoteric programming languages". Ohloh didn't even LIST
> Forth until a week or so ago and even now they can't detect the language
> properly.

I went to a Haskell conference a few weeks ago and gave an impromptu 5
minute talk about the Forth Haiku converter I wrote in Haskell a while
back (it was in response to a clf discussion about the Forth haikus).
As soon as I mentioned "Forth" a bunch of older folks in the audience
gave appreciative smiles.  I think the ideas of Forth have stayed
interesting even as the language's domain of practicality has become
pretty specialized.

I do think it is a pretty difficult language.  It has the attractive
characteristic of being simple enough that it's possible to understand
every detail of how it works, but the often less attractive
characteristic that you pretty much HAVE to understand all the details
in order to use it effectively.  Other languages are more like black
boxes, where behind-the-scenes machinery does more of the work without
the user having to know or care what is happening.

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#12000

On 5/8/12 10:41 AM, Paul Rubin wrote:
> Hans Bezemer<the.beez.speaks@gmail.com>  writes:
>> The last time I saw an article in a mainstream Linux magazine was when they
>> did a series on "esoteric programming languages". Ohloh didn't even LIST
>> Forth until a week or so ago and even now they can't detect the language
>> properly.
>
> I went to a Haskell conference a few weeks ago and gave an impromptu 5
> minute talk about the Forth Haiku converter I wrote in Haskell a while
> back (it was in response to a clf discussion about the Forth haikus).
> As soon as I mentioned "Forth" a bunch of older folks in the audience
> gave appreciative smiles.  I think the ideas of Forth have stayed
> interesting even as the language's domain of practicality has become
> pretty specialized.
>
> I do think it is a pretty difficult language.  It has the attractive
> characteristic of being simple enough that it's possible to understand
> every detail of how it works, but the often less attractive
> characteristic that you pretty much HAVE to understand all the details
> in order to use it effectively.  Other languages are more like black
> boxes, where behind-the-scenes machinery does more of the work without
> the user having to know or care what is happening.

I disagree. It is *necessary* to understand the inner workings of at 
least one implementation of Forth in order to write one. It is 
absolutely *not* necessary in order to write good Forth applications. In 
fact, it's potentially a liability to assume, for example, an ITC 
implementation because an increasing number of Forths work quite 
differently nowadays.

What *is* necessary is to understand *what words do* including their 
stack effects. That is something of a chore because Forth has a much 
larger command set than most languages, but in return there are no 
complicated rules of syntax, types, etc. to master.

Programmers in my classes can write pretty competent Forth by the end of 
the week, and I never teach anything about the inner workings of the 
system, because I have taught courses using multiple implementations 
that I don't even understand at that level myself. The newbies will get 
better with time as they learn more words (extend their own working 
vocabularies). In this sense, Forth resembles learning another human 
language: your ability to express yourself depends on developing a good 
vocabulary of words whose meaning you know.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

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#12001

"Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> writes:
> Programmers in my classes can write pretty competent Forth by the end
> of the week, 

I can see a week of instruction as being good enough to use Forth for
write-only purposes (i.e. developing simple programs starting from
nothing).  I've used it myself that way.  Becoming competent enough in
the language to be able to understand idiomatic Forth as written by
experienced practitioners seems to be rather harder.  I don't understand
much of the Forth code I see on this newsgroup even after some effort.
Haskell is the same way, which is why it's considered to have a steep
learning curve.  Most other languages in my experience are quite a bit
easier to get used to.

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#12004

On 5/8/12 11:26 AM, Paul Rubin wrote:
> "Elizabeth D. Rather"<erather@forth.com>  writes:
>> Programmers in my classes can write pretty competent Forth by the end
>> of the week,
>
> I can see a week of instruction as being good enough to use Forth for
> write-only purposes (i.e. developing simple programs starting from
> nothing).  I've used it myself that way.  Becoming competent enough in
> the language to be able to understand idiomatic Forth as written by
> experienced practitioners seems to be rather harder.  I don't understand
> much of the Forth code I see on this newsgroup even after some effort.
> Haskell is the same way, which is why it's considered to have a steep
> learning curve.  Most other languages in my experience are quite a bit
> easier to get used to.

Virtually all the courses I teach are for programmers working in teams, 
typically for new team members. A well-managed programming team should 
have internal standards for formatting, naming conventions, internal 
documentation, etc., regardless of language. I emphasize the need for 
these, and try to include some discussion of the style of the team I'm 
teaching for (if I know it).

It is possible to produce "write only" code in any language. It is also 
possible for a Forth newbie to produce clear, well-documented code.

I agree that a lot of the code posted on clf is pretty ugly. Folks here 
often indulge in obscure techniques either to pursue some question ("Is 
this possible?"), to show off, or both. It doesn't have to be that way, 
and the professionals I work with try to write clean, maintainable code.

In any case, understanding internal implementation details usually 
doesn't help with reading someone else's bad Forth.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

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#12014

Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> writes:
>> Programmers in my classes can write pretty competent Forth by the end
>> of the week, 
> 
> I can see a week of instruction as being good enough to use Forth
> for write-only purposes (i.e. developing simple programs starting
> from nothing).  I've used it myself that way.  Becoming competent
> enough in the language to be able to understand idiomatic Forth as
> written by experienced practitioners seems to be rather harder.  I
> don't understand much of the Forth code I see on this newsgroup even
> after some effort.

Mmm, but that's partly because some of the Forth code you see on this
newsgroup isn't very good.

Andrew.

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#12015

On Wed, 09 May 2012 08:45:34 +0100, Andrew Haley  
<andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> wrote:

> Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> writes:
>>> Programmers in my classes can write pretty competent Forth by the end
>>> of the week,
>>
>> I can see a week of instruction as being good enough to use Forth
>> for write-only purposes (i.e. developing simple programs starting
>> from nothing).  I've used it myself that way.  Becoming competent
>> enough in the language to be able to understand idiomatic Forth as
>> written by experienced practitioners seems to be rather harder.  I
>> don't understand much of the Forth code I see on this newsgroup even
>> after some effort.
>
> Mmm, but that's partly because some of the Forth code you see on this
> newsgroup isn't very good.
>
> Andrew.

There seems to be:
discussions about word implementations (standards)
degenerate discussions with name calling
occasional forth code

-- 
[dash dash space newline 4line sig]

Albi CNU

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