python for microcontrollers

[Peter Hansen]

Evil Bastard wrote:
> Peter Hansen wrote:
>>grabbing
>>an off the shelf Forth might be a more productive use of your time.
> 
> Heh, methinks one might be misunderstanding the Forth culture.

Lacking entirely in any knowledge of it whatsoever would be a more 
accurate description.  "Ignorant of" is even shorter, though no less 
accurate. ;-)

> Forth can, and so often does, disappear up its own ring-hole in the
> blink of an eye. Its hardcore extensibility is so often its own downfall
> since. with the way many people work with it. it earns its reputation as
> a 'write-only language' over and over again. Quite often, to understand
> a piece of Forth code, you have to crawl in and out of all the author's
> body cavities many times.

Okay, fine.  I can accept that Forth code can be inscrutable.  A belief 
that that would be the case is one reason I've actually never really 
done any Forth.

But I thought _you_ were the one who brought up Forth, so clearly you 
can't be against it on basic principles.

> What I'm saying is that it often takes less time to write a Forth than
> to properly learn and understand someone else's implemention. In this
> way, Forth is like undergarments - you can admire those worn by others,
> but you sure as hell don't want to wear them yourself. :P

Okay, but this implies either that Forth implementations are written in 
Forth (and no, e.g. C) or that people who implement Forth in, say, C let 
their Forth-inspired inclination to write inscrutable code bleed over 
into their C code as well.

So unless you're the only person around able to resist writing a poor 
implementation of Forth, I'm still puzzled why you would want to write 
your own when existing implementations could actually be just as 
readable and useful (or more so?) than whatever you could whip up as a 
one-off for this project.

(Not trying to argue, just understand, because it looks like you're 
conflating Forth programs with Forth implementations, or perhaps I'm 
even more ignorant than noted above and am missing a key point. :-)

-Peter