4 ms·
Marketing. There was a recent article that hit the nail on the head. The author was quite prolific within his field, and always used Forth. He would be called i
by db48x 2y ago
Marketing. There was a recent article that hit the nail on the head. The author was quite prolific within his field, and always used Forth. He would be called in as a consultant to do a certain kind of work (mostly DSP programming), and could adapt his existing Forth code to the new problems. His coworkers invariably thought that he was _cheating_ by using Forth. They were Real Engineers writing code in a Proper systems language like C. Don’t you know all of C’s advantages?
The fact was that he could run rings around whole teams of C programmers. His implementation would be more efficient, more reliable, and cheaper to mass produce (lower ram requirements, lower power requirements, etc). But he could never stay anywhere very long because all the Real Engineers knew that C was the Right Language to implement things in. His better solutions were seen as aberrations rather than a condemnation of their own mediocrity.
That’s the power of good marketing. Forth never had an industry giant spending billions a year on marketing to convince all of the engineers that it was the best language ever. C, C++, and Java all did. All the VPs have read articles and attended conferences that touted C++ or Java as the best thing ever, but they’ve never even heard of Forth.
- agumonkey 2y agoI've seen this partly. The influence of mediocre smooth talkers is hard to believe. I also believe that non-tech social groups are more impressed by large teams rather than one or two geniuses. Lastly large companies asking loads of money to operate will also have cushions in case of problems.. the efficient lone wolf will not. People with deep non mainstream knowledge should avoid mainstream by wide margins and try to assemble in small groups of like-minded hackers.
- deterministic 2y agoI hear the “marketing” argument all the time and I don’t buy it. Lisp (for example) has been promoted heavily for 60+ years by generation after generation of enthusiasts. And it hasn’t convinced the mainstream to switch. And meanwhile C and C++ code runs the world. Without any commercial marketing behind it.
- db48x 2y agoWow, ok. No commercial marketing? How about conferences? I’m sure none of the corporate sponsors have any marketing reason to contribute. <https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/conferences-worldwide https://isocpp.org/wiki/faq/conferences-worldwide>, <https://javaconferences.org/ https://javaconferences.org/> Or magazines? Surely they were entirely supported by their subscribers, not their advertisers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_magazines_published_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_magazines_pu...>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_computer_magazines_published_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_computer_maga...>