[Cialug] Forth, was Re: Question?

[Leeland Heins]

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 09:39 pm, D. Joe Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 01:40:35PM -0500, Christopher Freeman wrote:
> > My ex-cousin-once-removed-in-law used to program in Forth as a
> > free-lance programmer. That's pretty esoteric. He swore by it. I'll
> > never know why.
>
> Not so esoteric for embedded/robotic systems--the controls for
> the Space Shuttle's arm were programmed in Forth, if I recall
> correctly.  As are the controls for some of the greenhouses at
> Iowa State.  And Open Firmware is Forth, or something very
> Forth-like from what I hear and from what little I've seen when
> I've bothered to pay attention.

Probably the most popular Forth derivative is Postscript.  Look at
some Postscript output sometime, and then compare it to a Forth
book.  You'll quickly spot the similarity.  I played with Forth quite
a bit back in the mid early to mid 80s on the Apple II.  It was an
interesting language in its day, but I haven't had much interest in
it in a long time.

-- 
Leeland Heins, leeh@softwarejanitor.com