Re: [stack] Advantages of cat, joy ..?

On Feb 18, 2009, at 8:10 PM, eas lab wrote:

> John Nowak wrote:
>> Stack-based concatenative languages are well-suited to a linear
>> implementation; see Henry Baker's "The Forth Shall Be First" paper. I
>> may, however, be the only one interested in this.
>
> I vaguley think I read that, but it's not 'hello world'.
> The hello-world-principle: a complete demo; is what's missing.
> Or at least the 'full top assumption must be stated' to see how
> the facility provided by 'cat' will help build the total goal.

I can't make sense out of this. If you're saying that Baker hasn't  
provided the "hello world" for linear languages, look at his other  
papers. He has given several benchmarks.

> OK but what's missing is:
> and therefore X & Y and therefore the productivity is greater.
> Like the law-bloke told me 'you must spell out the full allegation
> chain; don't vague-out.'

Ultimately, what's more productive is what I can use for eight hours  
straight without getting frustrated.

I've no idea what sort of productivity "proof" you're looking for. Do  
you have an example of one? If not, how can I be expected to provide  
one?

> No ! Obviously Pascal is closer to natural language than forth
> or even C, which is a massive advantage ?

Read Thinking Forth.

And why would being closer to natural language necessarily be a  
massive advantage? Ever tried using AppleScript?

> As a prompt to 'how cat increases productivety', I'm giving
> examples of what IMO *does* increase productivety. OOF and all
> languages have their syntax for any 'construct' including the
> declaration and definition of classes/objects. So eg. an
> IF/THEN/ELSE in all laguages is just a thing with 3 args.
> So you forget about all the syntax crap, and just fill in
> the args.

What?

> Yes ! you've touched the essence of the matter: HCI is soft &
> slippery, and we technos don't want to be bothered with
> 'womans stuff',

Let's speak for ourselves now...

> I want to formalise the job and replace art by science.

Then start doing the science!

- John