The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001)

#61

Post by deterministic » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 1:26 AM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #24

Everything I read about Forth, and about people's reaction to it, sounds amazing. So why don't we use Forth for everything? Does it have some ceiling that makes it not great outside things like making firmware?

I know this is hard to accept for people enthusiastic about a language X (Forth/Lisp/Haskell/..) that hasn’t entered the mainstream despite years of salesmanship and promoting from X people:

There is a reason why it hasn’t happened (obviously).

It might not be for reasons X people agree with or value. However those reasons are important and valuable enough for non-X enthusiasts to bounce off X.

And to make matters worse, the typical reaction from X enthusiasts is to then claim that non-X developers are not smart enough to “get it” or that somehow people using X are smarter than non-X developers. Claims that are so obviously ridiculous that it makes non-X people bounce even harder off the X community.

I personally love learning new languages. And have written compilers for a few of my own. However that’s all fun and games. Not something I would use in anger for my day job where I have to work in a team and deliver highly complex software for large corporation that relies on my code to run their business.

However having said all that, Forth is really cool and fun to play with. I love minimum languages! Lisp is another fun one. Or the lambda calculus. All great fun languages!

Re: The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001)

#62

Post by deterministic » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 1:37 AM UTC

oersted wrote: post #27

saulpw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Forth philosophy generates specialized and incompatible systems that are only suitable for one person or small teams. For those teams who develop the system (or are willing to put significant time into learning a bespoke system), it's amazing--a 10x effect. But if you want to share code between teams or on the Internet or if you want fungible engineers (or have rapid turnover such is common in the industry these…

Indeed, any language that encourages you to program by building tailored DSLs for every problem domain has the same issue (Lisps, Racket…). It sounds very productive to always be able to express solutions with the perfect language for that type of problem. But you end up with a myriad bespoke languages that are very impractical to document and learn, and are a constant friction for collaboration (even with your futur…

You can use tailored DSLs in any language. Not just Lisp.

I do it all the time. It is a huge productivity boost.

An example is a biz application I recently delivered to a large international customer. More than 90% of the C++ and Typescript code was auto generated from a simple declarative spec. The only custom code was the customer specific biz logic and custom interface logic to external tools.

Yes it isn’t generated with macros Lisp style but it works equally well.

Re: The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001)

#63

Post by deterministic » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

db48x wrote: post #34

kstrauser wrote: post #24

Everything I read about Forth, and about people's reaction to it, sounds amazing. So why don't we use Forth for everything? Does it have some ceiling that makes it not great outside things like making firmware?

Marketing. There was a recent article that hit the nail on the head. The author was quite prolific within his field, and always used Forth. He would be called in as a consultant to do a certain kind of work (mostly DSP programming), and could adapt his existing Forth code to the new problems. His coworkers invariably thought that he was _cheating_ by using Forth. They were Real Engineers writing code in a Proper syst…

I hear the “marketing” argument all the time and I don’t buy it. Lisp (for example) has been promoted heavily for 60+ years by generation after generation of enthusiasts. And it hasn’t convinced the mainstream to switch.

And meanwhile C and C++ code runs the world. Without any commercial marketing behind it.

Re: The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001)

#64

Post by db48x » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 2:45 AM UTC

deterministic wrote: post #63

db48x wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing. There was a recent article that hit the nail on the head. The author was quite prolific within his field, and always used Forth. He would be called in as a consultant to do a certain kind of work (mostly DSP programming), and could adapt his existing Forth code to the new problems. His coworkers invariably thought that he was _cheating_ by using Forth. They were Real Engineers writing code in a Proper syst…

I hear the “marketing” argument all the time and I don’t buy it. Lisp (for example) has been promoted heavily for 60+ years by generation after generation of enthusiasts. And it hasn’t convinced the mainstream to switch. And meanwhile C and C++ code runs the world. Without any commercial marketing behind it.

Wow, ok. No commercial marketing?

How about conferences? I’m sure none of the corporate sponsors have any marketing reason to contribute. https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/conferences-worldwide>, https://javaconferences.org/>

Or magazines? Surely they were entirely supported by their subscribers, not their advertisers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_magazines_pu...>, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_computer_maga...>

Re: The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore (2001)

#65

Post by bagas31 » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

smitty1e wrote: post #48

exe34 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

muh shareholder value

Sure, but that is purely tactical, getting one to the next quarterly earnings statement. The strategic question is why going long (or, a better strategic/tactical balance) seems so impossible.

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