My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
vendor-specific Forth core
2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
crippled and unmaintained

Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
development has no priority.
Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.

It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:05:06 PM UTC+3, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> vendor-specific Forth core
> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> crippled and unmaintained
>

Add embedded as 4-th choice. Mecrisp, Amforth, FlashForth are actually
used for some embedded development.

On Tue, 21 Dec 2021 09:05:04 -0800 (PST)
"minf...@arcor.de" <minforth@arcor.de> wrote:

> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> vendor-specific Forth core
> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> crippled and unmaintained
>
> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> development has no priority.
>
> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>
> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?

As an outsider (almost perpetually looking in) I think anyone with an interest in Forth quickly sees how simple it is to implement, and then disappears down a rabbit-hole of Doing their own Thing. I had hopes of a variety called Brief (as, to me, the main innovation of Forth is Concatativeness [word?]) but, again, it was mostly just a man one show.

It also doesn't help that under
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth

it's listed under [other]

i.e. it's difficult to search for.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

Nickolay Kolchin schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2021 um 18:16:34 UTC+1:
> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:05:06 PM UTC+3, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > vendor-specific Forth core
> > 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > crippled and unmaintained
> >
> Add embedded as 4-th choice. Mecrisp, Amforth, FlashForth are actually
> used for some embedded development.

Correct. AFAIK prominent embedded application domain is control of small devices.
Multitasking with or without interrupts is very often required here.

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> vendor-specific Forth core
> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> crippled and unmaintained
>
> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> development has no priority.
>
> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>
> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?

I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
papers of the past era.
(https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).

-marcel

Marcel Hendrix schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2021 um 19:46:17 UTC+1:
> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > vendor-specific Forth core
> > 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > crippled and unmaintained
> >
> > Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> > development has no priority.
> >
> > Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> > or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> >
> > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> papers of the past era.
> (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
>
> -marcel

One man shows have become _very_ rare ....

I imagine IOT applications could be well served by Forth, but then even the Standard
treats a Forth system as an isolated entity. Although there have been past attempts:
https://www.taygeta.com/networking/forthnet.html

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:08:44 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
[..]
> One man shows have become _very_ rare ....

You observe that human beings have fundamentally
changed over the past 40 years?

-marcel

On 22/12/2021 04:05, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> vendor-specific Forth core
> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> crippled and unmaintained
>
> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> development has no priority.
>
> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>
> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
>

You haven't defined "progress". For me, it's the ability to write
applications without my feeling the tools I'm using are lacking. For
the targets and applications that interest me, I'm comfortable with
what I have. Others with objectives similar to mine who have tried it
appear to agree e.g.

"Highly recommend dx forth which has a lot of nice features for CP/M.
For example very easy to build a standalone .COM program using the
turnkey word."

I set out to please myself. Had my aim been to please others - or I
tried to bite off more than I could chew - I suspect I'd be here saying
there had been no progress :)

> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?

1. Glueware for desktop applications.
2. Embedded, especially FPGA-based configurable CPUs.

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 8:08:44 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> Marcel Hendrix schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2021 um 19:46:17 UTC+1:
> > On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > > My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > > 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > > vendor-specific Forth core
> > > 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > > 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > > crippled and unmaintained
> > >
> > > Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> > > development has no priority.
> > >
> > > Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> > > or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> > >
> > > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> > I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> > Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> > These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> > and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> > arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> > are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> > is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> > papers of the past era.
> > (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> >
> > -marcel
> One man shows have become _very_ rare ....
>
> I imagine IOT applications could be well served by Forth, but then even the Standard
> treats a Forth system as an isolated entity. Although there have been past attempts:
> https://www.taygeta.com/networking/forthnet.html

Bernd Paysan: https://github.com/forthy42/net2o

-marcel

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 2:39:56 AM UTC+3, Ilya Tarasov wrote:
> > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> 1. Glueware for desktop applications.

Doesn't Factor fills that niche?

Ilya Tarasov schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2021 um 00:39:56 UTC+1:
> > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> 1. Glueware for desktop applications.
> 2. Embedded, especially FPGA-based configurable CPUs.

As for glueware, Python or Lua seem much better equipped.
Is there any _significant_ market for such CPUs? I thought they are more
for prototyping or very samll series.

dxforth schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2021 um 23:46:18 UTC+1:
> On 22/12/2021 04:05, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > vendor-specific Forth core
> > 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > crippled and unmaintained
> >
> > Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> > development has no priority.
> >
> > Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> > or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> >
> > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> >
> You haven't defined "progress". For me, it's the ability to write
> applications without my feeling the tools I'm using are lacking. For
> the targets and applications that interest me, I'm comfortable with
> what I have. Others with objectives similar to mine who have tried it
> appear to agree e.g.
>
> "Highly recommend dx forth which has a lot of nice features for CP/M.
> For example very easy to build a standalone .COM program using the
> turnkey word."
>
> I set out to please myself. Had my aim been to please others - or I
> tried to bite off more than I could chew - I suspect I'd be here saying
> there had been no progress :)

With 'progress' I imagine things like more complex data structures, parallelism,
ready-to-use libraries for important application domains etc.

What you described is sort of "Forth is my Swiss army knife in my one-man show.
It is good enough as it is". But okay if this what it means to you.

On 22/12/2021 20:11, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> dxforth schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2021 um 23:46:18 UTC+1:
>> On 22/12/2021 04:05, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
>> > My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
>> > 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
>> > vendor-specific Forth core
>> > 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
>> > 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
>> > crippled and unmaintained
>> >
>> > Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
>> > development has no priority.
>> >
>> > Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
>> > or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>> >
>> > It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
>> > What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
>> >
>> You haven't defined "progress". For me, it's the ability to write
>> applications without my feeling the tools I'm using are lacking. For
>> the targets and applications that interest me, I'm comfortable with
>> what I have. Others with objectives similar to mine who have tried it
>> appear to agree e.g.
>>
>> "Highly recommend dx forth which has a lot of nice features for CP/M.
>> For example very easy to build a standalone .COM program using the
>> turnkey word."
>>
>> I set out to please myself. Had my aim been to please others - or I
>> tried to bite off more than I could chew - I suspect I'd be here saying
>> there had been no progress :)
>
> With 'progress' I imagine things like more complex data structures, parallelism,
> ready-to-use libraries for important application domains etc.

That would be reinventing the wheel - no? Who will care that Forth may one day
duplicate what's already been achieved elsewhere. ISTM it's not the language
clients care about, rather the programmer with ability to do what average
programmers and their ready-to-use libraries weren't capable of doing.

>
> What you described is sort of "Forth is my Swiss army knife in my one-man show.
> It is good enough as it is". But okay if this what it means to you.

According to Moore it's only the latter where Forth will survive:

"A mainstay of our economy is the employment of programmers. [...] To keep those
programmers busy requires clumsy languages and bugs to chase. [...] There are
niches in which you can be creative, productive, inspired. Not everyone can be
so lucky."

On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
>> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
>> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
>> vendor-specific Forth core
>> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
>> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
>> crippled and unmaintained
>>
>> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
>> development has no priority.
>>
>> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
>> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>>
>> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
>> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
>
> I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> papers of the past era.
> (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
>
> -marcel
>
The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
amusing, but also a bit tiresome.

If one views Forth as a general framework for building and using
programs for domain-specific problems, then Forth appears in a much
better light. This can be for significant large projects involving a
group of people, which occurs more often in the vendor sphere, or for
"one-man" shows, for which a particular and specific need IS the only
necessary rationale.

Yes, there are likely hundreds of non-commercial Forths which have been
developed to various degrees. A few of them are well documented and have
sufficient features for general purpose programming or for niche uses.
Many are simple experiments, and have been abandoned after their authors
lost interest. I fail to understand why is this a negative. If anything,
it is a plus -- those who attempt to write a Forth system and carry it
to some usable level will likely be well-suited for solving a problem
with a conventional, more complete Forth system.

Cheers,
Krishna

Krishna Myneni schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2021 um 15:21:40 UTC+1:
> On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> > On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> >> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> >> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> >> vendor-specific Forth core
> >> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> >> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> >> crippled and unmaintained
> >>
> >> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> >> development has no priority.
> >>
> >> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> >> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> >>
> >> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> >> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> >
> > I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> > Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> > These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> > and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> > arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> > are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> > is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> > papers of the past era.
> > (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> >
> > -marcel
> >
> The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
> mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
> amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
>
> If one views Forth as a general framework for building and using
> programs for domain-specific problems, then Forth appears in a much
> better light. This can be for significant large projects involving a
> group of people, which occurs more often in the vendor sphere, or for
> "one-man" shows, for which a particular and specific need IS the only
> necessary rationale.
>
> Yes, there are likely hundreds of non-commercial Forths which have been
> developed to various degrees. A few of them are well documented and have
> sufficient features for general purpose programming or for niche uses.
> Many are simple experiments, and have been abandoned after their authors
> lost interest. I fail to understand why is this a negative. If anything,
> it is a plus -- those who attempt to write a Forth system and carry it
> to some usable level will likely be well-suited for solving a problem
> with a conventional, more complete Forth system.
>
> Cheers,
> Krishna

If it stays with whining and hand wringing, you are right. Period. Nobody
needs that, waste of time.

But the question was more constructive: what is missing? where are the
bottle necks?

F.ex. those different TCP stacks mentioned. With some Google-fu one
might be able to pick one half-baked solution. With more time and effort
understand, debug, and adapt it. Would you do that?

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 5:21:40 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
> On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> > On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> >> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> >> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> >> vendor-specific Forth core
> >> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> >> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> >> crippled and unmaintained
> >>
> >> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> >> development has no priority.
> >>
> >> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> >> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> >>
> >> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> >> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> >
> > I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> > Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> > These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> > and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> > arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> > are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> > is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> > papers of the past era.
> > (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> >
> > -marcel
> >
> The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
> mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
> amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
>

But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:

http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf

What has changed?

On 12/22/21 09:30, Nickolay Kolchin wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 5:21:40 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
>> On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
>>>> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
>>>> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
>>>> vendor-specific Forth core
>>>> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
>>>> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
>>>> crippled and unmaintained
>>>>
>>>> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
>>>> development has no priority.
>>>>
>>>> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
>>>> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>>>>
>>>> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
>>>> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
>>>
>>> I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
>>> Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
>>> These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
>>> and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
>>> arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
>>> are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
>>> is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
>>> papers of the past era.
>>> (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
>>>
>>> -marcel
>>>
>> The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
>> mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
>> amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
>>
>
> But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:
>
> http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf
>
> What has changed?
>

My guess is the availability of other, better standardized programming
languages and tools which don't depart in convention as much from
traditional procedural programming is what has changed.

Krishna

On 12/22/21 08:43, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> Krishna Myneni schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2021 um 15:21:40 UTC+1:
>> On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
>>>> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
>>>> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
>>>> vendor-specific Forth core
>>>> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
>>>> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
>>>> crippled and unmaintained
>>>>
>>>> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
>>>> development has no priority.
>>>>
>>>> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
>>>> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
>>>>
>>>> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
>>>> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
>>>
>>> I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
>>> Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
>>> These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
>>> and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
>>> arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
>>> are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
>>> is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
>>> papers of the past era.
>>> (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
>>>
>>> -marcel
>>>
>> The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
>> mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
>> amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
>>
>> If one views Forth as a general framework for building and using
>> programs for domain-specific problems, then Forth appears in a much
>> better light. This can be for significant large projects involving a
>> group of people, which occurs more often in the vendor sphere, or for
>> "one-man" shows, for which a particular and specific need IS the only
>> necessary rationale.
>>
>> Yes, there are likely hundreds of non-commercial Forths which have been
>> developed to various degrees. A few of them are well documented and have
>> sufficient features for general purpose programming or for niche uses.
>> Many are simple experiments, and have been abandoned after their authors
>> lost interest. I fail to understand why is this a negative. If anything,
>> it is a plus -- those who attempt to write a Forth system and carry it
>> to some usable level will likely be well-suited for solving a problem
>> with a conventional, more complete Forth system.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Krishna
>
> If it stays with whining and hand wringing, you are right. Period. Nobody
> needs that, waste of time.
>
> But the question was more constructive: what is missing? where are the
> bottle necks?
>
> F.ex. those different TCP stacks mentioned. With some Google-fu one
> might be able to pick one half-baked solution. With more time and effort
> understand, debug, and adapt it. Would you do that?
>

Good. It's always better to point out a specific example of a need such
as a full-fledged TCP stack. My understanding is that the TCP stacks do
exist from the commercial Forth vendors for specific embedded
processors. Examples of client-server Forth demos are provided in some
of the free Forth systems as well -- e.g. the http and sockets layer in
Gforth, and the sockets layer in kForth. Are these half-baked? Depends
on what you need.

Krishna

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 6:38:16 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
> On 12/22/21 09:30, Nickolay Kolchin wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 5:21:40 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
> >> On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> >>>> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> >>>> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> >>>> vendor-specific Forth core
> >>>> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> >>>> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> >>>> crippled and unmaintained
> >>>>
> >>>> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> >>>> development has no priority.
> >>>>
> >>>> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> >>>> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> >>>>
> >>>> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> >>>> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> >>>
> >>> I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> >>> Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> >>> These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> >>> and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> >>> arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> >>> are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> >>> is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> >>> papers of the past era.
> >>> (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> >>>
> >>> -marcel
> >>>
> >> The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
> >> mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
> >> amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
> >>
> >
> > But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:
> >
> > http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf
> >
> > What has changed?
> >
> My guess is the availability of other, better standardized programming
> languages and tools which don't depart in convention as much from
> traditional procedural programming is what has changed.
>

Can you elaborate what do you mean by "better standardized programming
languages"?

Nickolay Kolchin schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2021 um 16:30:14 UTC+1:
> On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 5:21:40 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
> > On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > >> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > >> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > >> vendor-specific Forth core
> > >> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > >> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > >> crippled and unmaintained
> > >>
> > >> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> > >> development has no priority.
> > >>
> > >> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> > >> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> > >>
> > >> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > >> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> > >
> > > I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> > > Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> > > These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> > > and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> > > arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> > > are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> > > is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> > > papers of the past era.
> > > (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> > >
> > > -marcel
> > >
> > The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
> > mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
> > amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
> >
> But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:
>
> http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf
>
> What has changed?

Having spent the last 40 years with distributed control systems for various
industries, I can tell you that complexity and number of signals has increased
by magnitudes. Come modern complex standards for fire&safety systems,
networking, cyber security and so so and so on.

Today nobody with a sane mind would automate an airport in Forth.

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 7:44:43 PM UTC+3, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> Nickolay Kolchin schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2021 um 16:30:14 UTC+1:
> > On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 5:21:40 PM UTC+3, Krishna Myneni wrote:
> > > On 12/21/21 12:46, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 6:05:06 PM UTC+1, minf...@arcor.de wrote:
> > > >> My impression is that there are basically three different Forth worlds:
> > > >> 1) few commercially supported development toolchains with a battle-proven
> > > >> vendor-specific Forth core
> > > >> 2) ISO/ANS Forth with little progress and barely usable for real world apps
> > > >> 3) hundreds of personal/hobby/academic Forths or VMs, often severely
> > > >> crippled and unmaintained
> > > >>
> > > >> Ad 1) Vendors are customer-driven, they fulfill contracts. Generic language
> > > >> development has no priority.
> > > >>
> > > >> Ad 2) and 3) There seems a tendency towards permanently reinventing
> > > >> or retuning old wheels. Hence no progress there as well.
> > > >>
> > > >> It is a dilemma. Where are Forth's main application niches today?
> > > >> What is lacking in Forth that prevents it from filling these niches?
> > > >
> > > > I should hope there is a fourth world where people are using
> > > > Forth for their own extremely domain-specific problems.
> > > > These people fully control their copy or version of Forth
> > > > and have no desire to further develop the basis of an
> > > > arbitrarily extensible language. The only thing they
> > > > are missing (I guess) in the current time segment
> > > > is the Forth Dimensions/FORML/JFAR type of
> > > > papers of the past era.
> > > > (https://www.forth.com/forth-books/jfar-archives/).
> > > >
> > > > -marcel
> > > >
> > > The perennial hand wringing about Forth's dim prospects for being a
> > > mainstream language, even for niche applications, continues. It is a bit
> > > amusing, but also a bit tiresome.
> > >
> > But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:
> >
> > http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf
> >
> > What has changed?
> Having spent the last 40 years with distributed control systems for various
> industries, I can tell you that complexity and number of signals has increased
> by magnitudes. Come modern complex standards for fire&safety systems,
> networking, cyber security and so so and so on.
>
> Today nobody with a sane mind would automate an airport in Forth.

From safety point of view Forth is no different from C/C++. I.e. both work
with raw memory. Both have no builtin protection from overflow/underflow.
Forth code with proper testing and coverage will be as safe as C.

So, whats the problem? Language reputation, poor tools or lack of
programmers?

Nickolay Kolchin <nbkolchin@gmail.com> writes:
>> Today nobody with a sane mind would automate an airport in Forth.
> From safety point of view Forth is no different from C/C++.

Nobody with a sane mind would automate an airport in C today either.

> Forth code with proper testing and coverage will be as safe as C.

That's not saying much! And even assuming equivalence of the end
product, which one gets there with less total effort? Which is easier
to maintain and extend?

> So, whats the problem? Language reputation, poor tools or lack of
> programmers?

You mentioned Frama-C for validating C code: is there something like it
for Forth? What about for C++?

I'm not that advanced a C++ programmer but I use it in preference to C
these days and it really does help my productivity a lot, even if the
end product is not any safer. Productivity still counts.

> In article <87mtkswfoy.fsf@nightsong.com>, no.email@nospam.invalid says...

> That's not saying much! And even assuming equivalence of the end
> product, which one gets there with less total effort? Which is easier
> to maintain and extend?
>
Delphi ?
Funny how RAD dissapeard almost overnight. I wonder why.

> > So, whats the problem? Language reputation, poor tools or lack of
> > programmers?
>
All of the above?

> You mentioned Frama-C for validating C code: is there something like it
> for Forth? What about for C++?
>
Not a validator but you can see what "tools" are - and these are very old now.:
https://en.freedownloadmanager.org/Windows-PC/Crystal-REVS-for-C.html

My deja vu has deja vu...

Seasons greetings to all.
Have a good one.

john

Nickolay Kolchin <nbkolchin@gmail.com> writes:
> But 40 years ago people build complex systems in Forth. For example:
> http://dl.forth.com/jfar/vol3/no2/article4.pdf
> What has changed?

I brought up a C-based microkernel VSTa about 20 years ago; pushing bytes out
the UART to see where the kernel crashed as it clawed its way to life. It
was pretty torturous, but as the only option, I went with it.

I did some huge changes to exceptions and interrupts on ForthOS a few years
ago. It was under qemu (and bochs for "single step the microcode" type
debugging of my mistakes), and had to be like 100x more productive.

Would I go back? No. I did it, and I know how to do it. But I will decline
to do it for now and into the future.

I've done pretty big apps in Forth. Now I do them mostly in Python. Things
don't corrupt, you can ^C out, you skip all the memory allocation hassles.
Modules and classes and all the "batteries included" amenities. I know how
to do it the old way, but I will decline to do it on into the future.

Andy Valencia
Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html