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Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's

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"Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> wrote:

> In the late 70's and early 80's PL/M was what we came up against most in 
> embedded systems. microFORTH and later polyFORTH was significantly 
> smaller and faster than PL/M. That is what, for example, was on the 8086 
> devices used in the famous Saudi Arabia airport project, where we were 
> brought in because their code was too slow.

That is what I would expect.

> > Yeah but I didn't say that or think that. I'm talking about a systems
> > programming Forth to be an alternative for writing code for an existing
> > OS where the current choices are assembler, assembler, or assembler. I think
> > it would be interesting, possibly useful and not that difficult to
> > implement, because of the (lack of) syntax. And unique, since nothing else
> > sits in that niche.
> 
> It's a lot easier to write a standalone Forth, with all its own drivers 
> and everything, than to write a Forth that runs under any OS we've ever 
> seen.

That doesn't seem like it would be the case on z/Arch and in my case it
wouldn't matter because I'm thinking about Forth specifically as a special
purpose tool for writing system code for an OS (to extend the OS, not
replace it) that's already extremely mature and robust and has more
facilities than any of us have time to recreate...not that we need them all
but it does exist. And the platform is too damnned expensive to run a Forth
OS on it, it wouldn't be prudent at this juncture. 

Forth would be an interesting tool because of its extensibility, modularity,
and compactness in expressing things in a new way, and other languages
aren't useful in in this scenario.

> Such a Forth is not exactly a general-purpose OS, though, because it
> doesn't support other languages or a conventional disk directory, and
> other common features of a general-purpose OS, though it can run multiple
> threads doing asynchronous, mostly independent thing.  Gosh-awful fast,
> though.

Yes, it seems Forth would be rather (no pun intended!) ideal for embedded
and RTOS. Probably not many other languages could be so useful as a
homogenous OS and development environment all rolled into one.

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A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-22 19:16 -0400
  Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-03-23 00:38 -0700
    Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-03-23 00:56 -0700
  Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's For  interpreter. Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-03-23 12:53 +0100
    Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's For  interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-23 20:44 -0400
      Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's For  interpreter. Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-03-25 10:30 +0200
        Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's For  interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-25 06:05 -0400
          Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-03-27 03:03 +0200
            Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-03-26 15:39 -1000
              Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201203.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-03-28 11:18 +0200
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-30 07:04 -0400
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201203.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-03-30 19:24 +0200
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-03-30 13:00 -0700
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-04-04 16:09 +0200
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-30 18:06 -0400
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201204.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-04-02 16:39 +0200
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-04-02 15:37 -0700
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's BruceMcF <agila61@netscape.net> - 2012-04-02 16:59 -0700
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's kenney@cix.compulink.co.uk - 2012-04-03 17:15 -0500
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-04-04 05:23 -0400
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-04-04 15:58 +0200
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-04-05 09:57 -0400
                Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201204.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-04-05 11:21 +0200
          Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201203.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-03-27 13:08 +0200
      Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's For  interpreter. anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-26 08:58 +0000
  Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. Fanzo <cristianof6@gmail.com> - 2012-03-25 15:32 +0200
  Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@noavailemail.cmm> - 2012-03-30 18:05 -0400
    Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-04-02 05:08 -0400
      Re: A short history of the stages of development and status of RP's Forth interpreter. "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-04-10 11:07 -0400

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