Re: [stack] sweetening concatenative syntax

Stevan Apter <[email protected]> wrote:
> given the decision to code in a concatenative
>  language, i want my concatenativity neat, straight no chaser.

Heh. I'm the same way -- of course. That's a little bit of the
language researcher speaking rather than the true polyglot programmer,
though. Like the chemist that I was trained as, I'm always wondering
what would happen if I made a slightly purer extract. Well, I guess I
skip the step of blowing the resulting extract up in my face -- that's
the fun part of chemistry.

>  like about joy.  in contrast to dan, i think introducing variables in
>  any form should be resisted (although i've implemented both in my toy
>  languages, just for the heck of it.)

Yup.

> moreover, i agree with something dr. tanksley has often said:

Thank you, but I'm just Mr. Tanksley so far. I'm just starting on a
Master's degree, so perhaps you'll be able to address me as "dread
lord tanksley" in a while. (Is that the correct form of address?)

> we don't yet know all the properties of
>  these languages in their pure form, since no one (as far as i can tell
>  from years on this list) has written any large-scale, multi-programmer,
>  long-lived applications in any concatenative language.  many small
>  examples, much tinkering under the hood, but nothing approaching the
>  scale of, say, ebay.

I'm not so sure about that. Forth has been used in enormous
applications; see http://www.forth.com/resources/appNotes/index.html
(and that's just one Forth company). Postscript forms one of the
largest systems ever built (just about every computer is able to hook
up to just about every Postscript printer almost right out of the
box); it's not an integrated or monolithic system like eBay, but it's
phenomenally successful at what it's designed to do.

-Wm