Is Forth for real?

[Daniel Ciesinger]

Steven D'Aprano schrieb:
> On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:08:02 +0000, Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
> 
>>In article <pan.2006.02.12.15.11.04.739314 at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au>,
>>Steven D'Aprano  <steve at REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>>on the web for each language. By comparison, even Forth gives 13 million
>>>plus hits, and who uses Forth?

13m hits for forth as in "set forth", "firth of forth" etc.
.
>>The programmers of, among other things, the FedEx bar-code reader,
>>the Sun boot loader, and parts of the Space Shuttle.
> 
> You missed Apple's boot loader.

And LOTs of small tools, scripts, analyzers written in Forth, because it 
has such a nice "evaluate", beating e.g. JavaScript "evaluate" by a 
speed advantage around 1000 or more...
You can feed that with a datastream such as

123.50 MONITOR Rx 03 DC 0A 0D
124.00 COMMS   Tx 01 A5

...and convert such stuff into XML, SVG or any representation you like.
Very useful (and fast) e.g. for automotive applications.

> I love Forth. I'm no good at thinking at that low count-the-bytes level,
> but if I was, I'd much prefer to use Forth than C or assembly. I've got a
> bunch of Forth books here, and when I'm bored I read them for
> entertainment, and dream. I love the fact that Forth is still in use. But
> I'm under no illusions that there are millions of Forth developers getting
> paid to write in Forth.

Maybe a few hundred - and then some thousands who write their utils in 
Forth during their paid time...

Daniel