Language extensibility (was: Why is tcl broken?)

[Lieven Marchand]

cbbrowne at news.brownes.org (Christopher B. Browne) writes:

> If it weren't that he's actually gotten truly useful results out of
> all of these things, he'd probably be considered "just another of the
> opinionated fools" that clutter up the Internet.
> 
> Note that the final item on that list is really crucial; he minimizes
> things to the max, and the rather bizarre results are indeed direct
> results of that philosophy.

The difference between Moore and "just another of the opinionated
fools" is indeed that he gets results. I'm more into Common Lisp these
days but "Thinking Forth" is a book that has radically changed many of
my ideas about programming. 

It's also interesting to see that he resists most of the additions
that have been made to "Standard Forth" in the last decade and still
gets the work done. Perhaps Forth and Lisp are really duals in the
language space with Common Lisp and Moore's minimalist Forth on the
extreme ends. Forth and Lisp (with Basic) are also the languages with
a lot of variations and differences (perhaps they should be called
language families?).

-- 
Lieven Marchand <mal at bewoner.dma.be>
If there are aliens, they play Go. -- Lasker