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Re: Using Forth in the current year.

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Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> writes:
> 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.

Is that on a 64 bit system?  Even if yes, those numbers all sound way
too high.  Erlang runs ok in 64 meg embedded systems and Forth as you
know is generally tiny.  I have no experience with npm http-server but
people use it all the time on Beaglebone/RPi type systems with 256MB or
512MB and it doesn't use all the memory.

I did look at your Forth web server and thought the implementation
approach was pretty cute, though it was SwiftForth-dependent so I didn't
try it out.  I'd expect it to not need (much) more memory than the
httpd's found in (say) OpenWRT boards, which usually run in a few
hundred K or less.  Also, Fossil (fossil-scm.org) is a complete VCS, bug
tracker, wiki, and web server, written in C with an embedded SQL
database (SQLite), all in a single image of 2MB or so (used to be under
1MB but it's gotten bigger recently).  

> 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'?

RAM can also be a serious constraint ;-).

> poll() ... is used mainly because its data structures and values are
> well-documented, as opposed to select() for example where you'll told
> to use some magic C macros, and nevermind what they do.

Select just returns bit maps of which fd's have i/o available.  But poll
or epoll are better if you have lots of active channels.

> For $10/month or so, you can get an account on a shared server that
> has 64GB of RAM.  But, it's running MySQL and Apache already,
> configured for thousands of sites already.  And by policy you're not
> to have long-running processes, since people would of course have
> servers at 1GB each if allowed, so you have to use CGI for dynamic
> content.  Here, no, memory pretty much doesn't matter.

Look up erlangonxen.org - you can spin up a complete Erlang VM running
directly on a Xen hypervisor (no *nix kernel) in about 20 msec.  So you
can launch one from scratch on every request, no need for long running
processes or even long running computers ;-).

> You would strain something, trying to write a Forth CGI program that
> used as much RAM as PHP does.

PHP can run in a few meg, Forth should of course use less.

> Even with the $10/year option, 1GB of RAM is pretty tight when you
> need sshd, some other minor services, and a database server, in
> addition to your 1GB-resident webserver.

Nah, to misquote Bill Gates, 64MB should be enough for anyone.

http://lowendbox.com/blog/yes-you-can-run-18-static-sites-on-a-64mb-link-1-vps/

Really though, the JS bloatware that everyone these days puts into their
web pages need gigabytes of memory on the client side, so I wonder what
a 64MB server is proving.

> Apache has a defect.

Nobody uses Apache on small sites any more.

> If you have all of 64GB of RAM, and only 64 customers to that server,
> then you can't encourage them to run their own Node.js Express

I'd be interested in the memory footprints if you run your tests again
under a 32 bit kernel.  People run Node all the time in tiny little VPS's.

> All continues to matter that "doesn't matter anymore".  So Forth is
> pretty good, and you should use it.  It will still be good in five
> years when a typical server will have a full 1TB of RAM.

An Erlang-like Forth system with isolated lightweight processes instead
of the classic shared memory multitasker could be interesting.  I guess
OForth is something like that.

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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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