> For a few months now, I have been watching a Yahoo group for the TI MSP430
> family. Apparently there is nobody in that group using Forth! Considering
> its advantages in an embedded systems environment, I find that rather
> appalling.
>
> While I doubt either Forth Inc. or MPE have particularly large advertising
> budgets, they are the players who should be servicing the embedded systems
> market. Unfortunately, it seems that they are up against a mindset that
> there is only C and assembler.
>
> While most of the questions to the Yahoo group could reasonably be answered
> by RTFM, it is apparent that a lot of the posters have English as a second
> language. Given the nature of the manuals, for them the manuals are not an
> easy read and RTFM isn't an appropriate answer. The remaining questions
> seem to relate either to difficulties in getting their chosen C compiler to
> work for them or being unable to debug their latest chunk of C code. It
> should be possible to attract the later group to Forth if only for the
> interactive aspect. But the whole mindset seems to be 'there is only C and
> assembler'. How does one get their attention for long enough to consider ...

>While I doubt either Forth Inc. or MPE have particularly large advertising
>budgets, they are the players who should be servicing the embedded systems
>market. Unfortunately, it seems that they are up against a mindset that
>there is only C and assembler.

>The remaining questions
>seem to relate either to difficulties in getting their chosen C compiler to
>work for them or being unable to debug their latest chunk of C code. It
>should be possible to attract the later group to Forth if only for the
>interactive aspect.

> Robert Miller wrote:

>> For a few months now, I have been watching a Yahoo group for the TI
>> MSP430 family. Apparently there is nobody in that group using Forth!
>> Considering its advantages in an embedded systems environment, I find
>> that rather appalling.
>>
>> While I doubt either Forth Inc. or MPE have particularly large
>> advertising budgets, they are the players who should be servicing the
>> embedded systems market. Unfortunately, it seems that they are up
>> against a mindset that there is only C and assembler.
>>
>> While most of the questions to the Yahoo group could reasonably be
>> answered by RTFM, it is apparent that a lot of the posters have English
>> as a second language. Given the nature of the manuals, for them the
>> manuals are not an easy read and RTFM isn't an appropriate answer. The
>> remaining questions seem to relate either to difficulties in getting
>> their chosen C compiler to work for them or being unable to debug their
>> latest chunk of C code. It should be possible to attract the later group ...

> On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:36:48 -0400, "Robert Miller"
> compmore.net> wrote:
>

>>While I doubt either Forth Inc. or MPE have particularly large advertising
>>budgets, they are the players who should be servicing the embedded systems
>>market. Unfortunately, it seems that they are up against a mindset that
>>there is only C and assembler.

> ...

>>The remaining questions
>>seem to relate either to difficulties in getting their chosen C compiler
>>to
>>work for them or being unable to debug their latest chunk of C code. It
>>should be possible to attract the later group to Forth if only for the
>>interactive aspect.

>
> You're actually asking a series of questions here, including
> 1) How do you make Forth socially acceptable?
> 2) How do you get people to try Forth? ...

> "Elizabeth D Rather" forth.com> wrote in message
> news:a9SdnW6gnNpz61zVnZ2dnUVZ_q_inZ2d@supernews.com...

>> Robert Miller wrote:

>>> While most of the questions to the Yahoo group could reasonably be
>>> answered by RTFM, it is apparent that a lot of the posters have English
>>> as a second language. Given the nature of the manuals, for them the
>>> manuals are not an easy read and RTFM isn't an appropriate answer. The
>>> remaining questions seem to relate either to difficulties in getting
>>> their chosen C compiler to work for them or being unable to debug their
>>> latest chunk of C code. It should be possible to attract the later group
>>> to Forth if only for the interactive aspect. But the whole mindset seems
>>> to be 'there is only C and assembler'. How does one get their attention
>>> for long enough to consider Forth?

>> FORTH, Inc. has an excellent SwiftX for the MSP430, and it's been one of
>> our better sellers. Inasmuch as many MSP430 users are looking for
>> low-power solutions, SwiftX has a power-saving feature that automatically
>> goes to low-power mode when the chip is idle, waking up on an interrupt.
>> This requires minimal attention from the application programmer (one ...

> "Stephen Pelc" mpeforth.com> wrote in message

> I'm really not too sure what your point is here. I don't believe I have
> made any claims, let alone having claimed too much. Simply put, Forth fits
> nicely with the way I like to work - an iterative try it and see approach.
> Looking at the questions asked on the MSP430 Users group, I get the sense
> that a lot of the questions asked there would quickly yield to such a try it
> and see approach. Forth, or at least SwiftX, allows that. Read the manual,
> write the registers, see what happens, write the function once you've
> figured out what to do. As a test engineer, I've traversed the code-compile
> & link - download - debug loop with C far too many times - though usually in
> a windows based...