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Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth

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"HAA" <someone@microsoft.com> writes:
> That's using an ANSI standard as a means of gaining formal recognition
> (or losing an existing perception) in the hope it will secure
> financial benefit for the Forth industry as a whole.

That's a perfectly normal reason to standardize something.

> All the evidence is it either did not work or possibly precipitated
> the route of Forth vendors from the market

Maybe true, hard to tell.  In any case, an idea that turns out
afterwards to not work was not necessarily a bad idea when it was first
put in place.

It's more obvious to me that Forth's appropriate technical niche shrunk
as computers changed over the years, so non-standard Forths have also
fallen into disuse.  I don't see how not having a standard could help
that.

I don't personally care much about using Forth commercially or about
writing portable Forth code, but I still see ANS useful as a basis of
common understanding.  If I code something in gforth with the intention
of porting it to smaller Forth on an MCU, it's easier if the MCU Forth
at least somewhat resembles ANS even if some aspects differ.

>> It also became a great deal easier to hire Forth programmers who knew
>> Standard Forth 
> Really?  What Forth programmer doesn't know ANS Forth which is a formal
> description of 40 years of Forth?

You mean now?  Or when the ANS was first developed?  It's sure easier to
deal with a Forth reasonably similar to what you're used to, than a
completely idiosyncratic one that you might encounter if someone decided
to invent a Forth from scratch as part of a hardware project.

> "I would find examples of people using standard "portable" ANSI Forth
> routines from libraries that were 10,000 times slower than the way I
> would do it."  J. Fox

He was talking about running a software ANS implementation vs. running a
limited Forth on a hardware Forth chip.

> 200x has all the appearance of a robber going through the pockets of
> the corpse that is ANS Forth looking for glory that evaporated long
> ago.

Forth's days of growth are over, but it's perfectly reasonable for those
who use it to want to update the standard to reflect present-day
practices.

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Just saw this - Description of Forth Steve Graham <solitary.wanderer52@gmail.com> - 2017-01-05 09:11 -0800
  Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth november.nihal@gmail.com - 2017-01-05 12:52 -0800
  Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth "HAA" <someone@microsoft.com> - 2017-01-07 12:08 +1100
    Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2017-01-06 18:09 -0800
      Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth "HAA" <someone@microsoft.com> - 2017-01-08 11:47 +1100
        Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Julian Fondren <julian.fondren@gmail.com> - 2017-01-07 17:59 -0800
        Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2017-01-07 18:23 -0800
        Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2017-01-07 18:51 -1000
          Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2017-01-08 17:02 -0800
          Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth "HAA" <someone@microsoft.com> - 2017-01-10 10:38 +1100
            Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-01-09 17:35 -0800
              Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2017-01-09 18:32 -1000
                Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2017-01-10 04:17 -0600
                Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Alex <alex@rivadpm.com> - 2017-01-10 13:41 +0000
                Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2017-01-10 08:05 -0600
            Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Alex <alex@rivadpm.com> - 2017-01-10 13:50 +0000
        Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Alex <alex@rivadpm.com> - 2017-01-08 08:58 +0000
    Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2017-01-06 18:58 -0800
      Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth november.nihal@gmail.com - 2017-01-08 14:30 -0800
        Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-01-08 21:15 -0800
    Re: Just saw this - Description of Forth november.nihal@gmail.com - 2017-01-08 14:24 -0800

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