Re: [stack] Survey: Your impressions and thoughts about concatenative languages

Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> For this my hopes were for people to express specific examples of how
> concatenative languages have been helpful for them developing
> software, or understanding concepts.
> Sorry for not being more specific.

I have to give the same apology. I can't name a specific time... I
don't feel particularly bad about that, first because I don't expect
one for any language :-), and second because I've been using Forth for
a long time now... One would expect "conversion stories" to come early
in the experience, not late.

> >- I consider a language to be concatenative when it has the following
> > properties: (shrug) meets the semi-formal definition using
> > concatenation of source text.

> Are you referring to the definition we worked on a few months ago on
> the list? IIRC we had a few definitions floating around, and some
> contention. Would you mind sharing your favourite one with me?

That was a good discussion, but I don't know if it came to a
conclusion. The problem wasn't that we didn't have a definition; the
problem was and is that we didn't know what our definition implied. I
think it's still reasonable to be suspicious that our definitions are
too vague, that they include things which all of us would agree are
not "concatenative languages".

> I don't
> neccessarily want the best one, just the one that best captures the
> spirit of concatenative languages for you.

I'm stuck with "I know it when I see it," and I hate having to say that.

> Or perhaps just elaborate a
> bit on what about concatenation of source text makes a language
> concatenative?

Well, it's not right to limit this group to only stack-based
languages; that would rule out Enchilada, which is definitely
concatenative but doesn't use a stack (or that's the impression I
got...).

> - Christopher

-Wm