|
|
 Up |
|
|
  |
Author: J ThomasJ Thomas Date: Oct 5, 2006 04:52
Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
> I have to repeat John's answer, if you refuse to face the evidence,
> we cannot proceed. Sorry, I'm not physisist, I'm chemist. Anyway
> you can't proceed refusing to believe evident facts. It is even
> worse, than counterproductive.
Where are the facts?
> Now you say, that phlogiston's death was possibly caused by
> change in fashions, or the way people were trained. Sorry,
> I don't believe that. Software is our practice like other
> laboratory technique, it is not influenced by fashion to
> that extent. If Forth shows itself unsuitable, for any
> practical reason, it is replaced. John's interpretation of
> Forth decline in astronomy and astrophysics seems reasonable.
> Anyway, noone has provided alternative, therefore it is not to
> be questioned.
|
| Show full article (3.82Kb) |
|
| | 9 Comments |
|
|
Author: Aleksejj SaushevAleksejj Saushev Date: Oct 5, 2006 07:32
"J Thomas" gmail.com> writes:
> Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
>
>> I have to repeat John's answer, if you refuse to face the evidence,
>> we cannot proceed. Sorry, I'm not physisist, I'm chemist. Anyway
>> you can't proceed refusing to...
|
| Show full article (7.39Kb) |
|
| | 5 Comments |
|
|
Author: John DotyJohn Doty Date: Oct 5, 2006 09:27
J Thomas wrote:
> Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
>
>> I have to repeat John's answer, if you refuse to face the evidence,
>> we cannot proceed. Sorry, I'm not physisist, I'm chemist. Anyway
>> you can't proceed refusing to believe evident facts. It is even
>> worse, than counterproductive.
>
> Where are the facts?
>
>> Now you say, that phlogiston's death was possibly caused by
>> change in fashions, or the way people were trained. Sorry,
>> I don't believe that. Software is our practice like other
>> laboratory technique, it is not influenced by fashion to
>> that extent. If Forth shows itself unsuitable, for any
>> practical reason, it is replaced. John's interpretation of
>> Forth decline in astronomy and astrophysics seems reasonable.
>> Anyway, noone has provided alternative, therefore it is not to
>> be questioned.
> ...
|
| Show full article (5.54Kb) |
| 1 Comment |
|
|
Author: Elizabeth D RatherElizabeth D Rather Date: Oct 5, 2006 14:06
J Thomas wrote:
> Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
...
>> The fact is decline of Forth immediatly after the adoption of
>> yet another standard, which declared common practice "out of law".
>> Can you propose other interpretation? I don't see anything
>> reasonable.
>
> OK, an objective assertion! Can you find some way to document when
> Forth declined? Perhaps a time-series of Forth jobs by year? Or Forth
> projects? A lot of Forth has been done by independent contractors who
> have contracts instead of jobs. (If we could measure that, we'd want to
> compare it to the fluctuations in number of contracts. When companies
> want to take things inhouse all the contractors suffer, not just Forth
> contractors.)
|
| Show full article (1.82Kb) |
| no comments |
|
|
Author: Elizabeth D RatherElizabeth D Rather Date: Oct 5, 2006 14:41
Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
> "J Thomas" gmail.com> writes:
> ...
>> I have provided alternatives. FIrst, literally change of
>> fashion.
>
> It is doubtful, at least.
> Academic field is not influenced by fashion to that extent.
> If it were, you won't find a program in Fortran. That's not the case.
>
> On contrary, you will find many users of Fortran and
> Perl, Python, or AWK, but not Forth.
> John names TCL, Python, others.
|
| Show full article (5.76Kb) |
| 4 Comments |
|
|
Author: Elizabeth D RatherElizabeth D Rather Date: Oct 5, 2006 14:49
John Doty wrote:
> ...
> Elizabeth apparently has records of Forth contractors. How many were
> there in, say, 1980, 1990, 2000?
We actually have a much easier time finding competent professional Forth
contractors now than ever. In the 80's, the woods were full of a lot of
hobbyists who had fiddled a bit with Fig Forth and tried to claim they
were Forth programmers. They're mostly gone now, and no loss. The more
capable ones survived. The generation of contractors who learned Forth
in the 90's tend to be professional engineers, many of whom produce
really excellent code.
Cheers,
Elizabeth
|
| Show full article (0.99Kb) |
| no comments |
|
|
Author: John DotyJohn Doty Date: Oct 5, 2006 17:17
Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
> I spent the first 20 years of my career in academia. I found "fashion"
> to be a very major player.
Maybe in some areas. Not in the labs where the computer is only a tool.
> In fact, fashion is the major reason for the
> survival of Fortran,
Now wait a second, you can't have it both ways. Fortran survived from
inertia, not fashion. Inertia driven largely by legacy code, along with
the fact that for a long time it was the "lingua franca": the only
language that you could choose for a collaborative project and be sure
that everyone could use it.
> which is very tedious and inefficient for a lot of
> scientific programming despite the fact that it was originally designed
> for it.
It's not *that* bad. When I was a grad student, I wrote an embedded
system and even a small infix parser/interpreter in it. Like any tool,
you just have to go with its logic, not fight against it.
|
| Show full article (5.94Kb) |
| no comments |
|
|
Author: Aleksejj SaushevAleksejj Saushev Date: Oct 6, 2006 05:55
Elizabeth D Rather forth.com> writes:
> Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
>> "J Thomas" gmail.com> writes:
>>> ...
>>> I have provided alternatives. FIrst, literally change of
>>> fashion.
>>
>> It is doubtful, at least.
>> Academic field...
|
| Show full article (7.67Kb) |
| 1 Comment |
|
|
Author: John DotyJohn Doty Date: Oct 6, 2006 10:15
I accidentally hit the send button on this, and then got busy, so let me
try to finish the thought.
Elizabeth D Rather wrote:
> I spent the first 20 years of my career in academia. I found "fashion"
> to be a very major player.
Maybe in some areas. Not in the labs where the computer is only a tool.
> In fact, fashion is the major reason for the
> survival of Fortran,
Now wait a second, you can't have it both ways. Fortran survived from
inertia, not fashion. Inertia driven largely by legacy code, along with
the fact that for a long time it was the "lingua franca": the only
language that you could choose for a collaborative project and be sure
that everyone could use it.
I'm told that part of Fortran's continued use in the 21st century is due
to extremely good parallelizing compilers.
> which is very tedious and inefficient for a lot of
> scientific programming despite the fact that it was originally designed
> for it.
|
| Show full article (5.61Kb) |
| no comments |
|
|
|
|
|
Author: Elizabeth D RatherElizabeth D Rather Date: Oct 6, 2006 11:34
Aleksejj Saushev wrote:
> Elizabeth D Rather forth.com> writes:
> ...
>>> Well, the latter is not true, but the only Forth suitable is
>>> proposed by coming standard to be banished.
>> Can you elaborate? I find that hard to believe. We see Forth
>> used in automation regularly, with considerable success, and I
>> certainly don't see anything in the Forth 200x discussions about
>> "banishing" anything.
>
> Probably, it is bad translation, you may call my "automation"
> "scripting". Sorry for my English.
Ok, that's helpful. We understand "automation" primarily to refer to
control of devices and processes such as industrial processes.
Scripting is rather different. However, we've heard here from a number
of folks using Forth in scripting applications.
|
| Show full article (2.28Kb) |
| no comments |
|
|
