Re: [stack] Re: Joy noob checking in!

On Tue, 11 May 2010, Rodney D Price wrote:

> Not to mention that you'd have to learn the low-level OS calls for
> either Linux, OSX, or Windows, plus the dirty details of OS device
> drivers, plus...  It makes me shudder just to think of it.

Yep! A daunting task, for sure, for some! It sweeps over me though,
that to truly "get into" Forth, one needs to be dabbling with
robotics, or CNC Lathes or military drones or something. Would you not
agree? Otherwise, what's the point? Forth never struck me as being a
general-purpose language. I know! "Smart toilets" - automatic
flushing; gallonage monitoring toilets. ;)

> The reasons stated above are why I say that Forth is great for
> /small/ embedded systems, but not for other things.  There exist
> several (many?) Forths that various people have written to run on
> top of an OS.  It appears that RainbowForth is not one of them.  If
> you really must start with Forth, download the free trial Forth from
> http://www.forth.com.  It at least is a commercial-grade
> implementation of Forth.  No guarantees on any of the others.

I have gforth on my OS X box - it works OK. I also have Hans
Beezemer's 4TH - it's cool too - reminiscent of Turbo C and Turbo
Pascal. If I could only think of something useful to do with them,
then maybe I might be motivated to bear down and learn them better. ;)

I do like Miranda though...
-- 
Duke