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Not nonexistent-- there are many stack-oriented programming languages[1], of which Forth is the most famous. There's even a "Reverse Polish Lisp" on HP calcula
by Scaevolus 13y ago
Not nonexistent-- there are many stack-oriented programming languages[1], of which Forth is the most famous.
There's even a "Reverse Polish Lisp" on HP calculators!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_by_type#Stack-based_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages_b...
- revelation 13y agoSorry, I meant there is no benefit to using it in programming languages.
- Scaevolus 13y agoForth is arguably the best language in terms of expressive power/language complexity, though that's largely due to the denominator. It's a great choice for tightly constrained devices, though far fewer devices have such constraints now. The mental overhead of having to track stack-effects for each function makes it difficult to scale to large systems and maintain productivity, but if you're trying to eke every iota of power out of a chip with a tiny amount of ROM, it's hard to beat a direct-threaded (or token-threaded...) Forth.
- nealabq 13y agoSee also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation#Current_implementations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation#Current...