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This is both vague and speculative though. Vague because you have made no specific claims that could be evaluated one way or the other. Speculative because you

by nequo 2y ago

This is both vague and speculative though. Vague because you have made no specific claims that could be evaluated one way or the other. Speculative because you have said nothing about Forth. You cannot make engineering decisions based on "it'll change how you program." There are several concrete examples of turning imperative code into pure monadic code that contains less boilerplate and is less noisy with Haskell's do notation. Exhaustiveness checking, encoding invariants in types, those all have good examples that one can read and agree or disagree with. Surely there are concrete examples that one can give about Forth too?

skydhash 2y ago
It's metaphysical. Like learning a foreign language widen your perspective. It's a particular insight you gain about the act of programming that makes you realize that you've been boxing yourself to a very small imperative/oop space. Writing C code feels like writing a rule book, writing java feels like designing a lego set, writing lisp feels like writing proof, writing prolog feels like writing puzzles. Writing forth feels like writing a dictionary, then after that you write a few sentences. They're different feeling, but forth is one of the most flexible as you can go up and down from the most basic units to the high level ones. As another comment has mentioned, you can program forth where the basic units are elements from another language, and construct a dsl/dictionary out of it. Then switch the basic units while retaining your business logic for a faster implementation without a full rewrite.
- immibis 2y ago
  Not just the realization you were boxed into a space, but also knowledge of stuff inside a different box. The more boxes you have the ability to access, the better.
saulpw 2y ago
The creator of Forth wrote this: > I wish I knew what to tell you that would lead you to write good Forth. I can demonstrate. I have demonstrated in the past, ad nauseam, applications where I can reduce the amount of code by 90% percent and in some cases 99%. It can be done, but in a case by case basis. The general principle still eludes me. -- Chuck Moore https://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm https://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm You might appreciate other quotes from the above page.

by nequo 2y ago

skydhash 2y ago

It's metaphysical. Like learning a foreign language widen your perspective. It's a particular insight you gain about the act of programming that makes you realize that you've been boxing yourself to a very small imperative/oop space. Writing C code feels like writing a rule book, writing java feels like designing a lego set, writing lisp feels like writing proof, writing prolog feels like writing puzzles. Writing forth feels like writing a dictionary, then after that you write a few sentences. They're different feeling, but forth is one of the most flexible as you can go up and down from the most basic units to the high level ones. As another comment has mentioned, you can program forth where the basic units are elements from another language, and construct a dsl/dictionary out of it. Then switch the basic units while retaining your business logic for a faster implementation without a full rewrite.

immibis 2y ago
Not just the realization you were boxed into a space, but also knowledge of stuff inside a different box. The more boxes you have the ability to access, the better.

saulpw 2y ago

The creator of Forth wrote this: > I wish I knew what to tell you that would lead you to write good Forth. I can demonstrate. I have demonstrated in the past, ad nauseam, applications where I can reduce the amount of code by 90% percent and in some cases 99%. It can be done, but in a case by case basis. The general principle still eludes me. -- Chuck Moore https://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm https://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm You might appreciate other quotes from the above page.