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Re: Using Forth in the current year.

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On Mon, 30 Nov 2015 14:35:12 -0800 (PST)
Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello clf,
> 
> Have you heard that Forth can't be used for real applications,
> because people are too caught up in having to come up with their own
> data structures?  Have you heard that no Forth teaches the use of
> 'structs'?

[root@maxa-pc ~]# pacman -Ss forth
[root@maxa-pc ~]# yaourt forth
1 aur/4th 3.62.0-4 (Out of Date) (7)
    A Forth Compiler
2 aur/ficl 4.1.0-1 (0)
    Forth Inspired Command Language
3 aur/gforth 0.7.3-1 [installed] (34)
    Fast and portable implementation of the ANS Forth language
4 aur/pforth-git c232a93-1 (0)
    A portable implementation of the Forth programming language written
in ANSI C 5 aur/retro-bzr 453-1 (0)
    Retro is a portable, stack-based language with roots in Forth.
==> Enter n° of packages to be installed (ex: 1 2 3 or 1-3)
==> -------------------------------------------------------
==> 

Seems that problem with forth is that there is no compiler for it
on Linux....
What counts is availability of usable libraries and compilers.

> 
> I spent a week, working after work, and one weekend, writing a Forth
> webserver.  As it only took me about an hour to achieve similar ends
> with Erlang, this probably isn't impressive.

If you have http server in stdlib, like in Golang, you need 5
minutes ;)

  But the Forth webserver
> runs in 22MB fixed memory and the Erlang webserver starts out using
> 1.1GB of RAM.  npm's 'http-server', written in Node.js, starts out
> consuming 772MB of RAM.

Golang http server starts with 4mb and grows to 40mb.
rwasa, written in assembler takes 3mb and starts with 0.5mb.

> 
> Have you heard that those differences in memory use doesn't matter?

What matters is reqs/sec mostly.

> 
> I say 'fixed memory' because the Forth webserver has a bunch of
> constants and limits in it.  HTTP requests can only be up to some
> multiple of KB in size; there can only ever be a hundred
> simultaneous connections; and so on.
> 
> Have you heard that limits like this are bad design?  Have you heard
> of the "Zero, One, Many" rule by which a webserver must handle
> infinitely many connections sending HTTP requests without bounds?

That depends on site. If site is busy, having certain limits is same as
DOS...

> 
> Have you heard that there's no place for Forth outside of embedded
> hardware?  If you've got even 1MB of flash, isn't it time to use a
> 'real language'?

Forth is *slow*. That kills it's usage for me...

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Thread

Using Forth in the current year. Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2015-11-30 14:35 -0800
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Ron Aaron <rambamist@gmail.com> - 2015-12-01 06:43 +0200
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Melzzzzz <mel@zzzzz.com> - 2015-12-01 06:13 +0100
    Re: Using Forth in the current year. rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-12-01 01:38 -0500
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-11-30 21:22 -0800
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2015-12-01 05:45 -0800
    Re: Using Forth in the current year. Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> - 2015-12-01 15:01 +0000
      Re: Using Forth in the current year. Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2015-12-01 08:30 -0800
      Re: Using Forth in the current year. anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2015-12-05 16:35 +0000
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2015-12-02 06:29 -0500
  Re: Using Forth in the current year. Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2015-12-05 13:34 +0100
    Re: Using Forth in the current year. Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2015-12-05 05:56 -0800

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