Hugh Aguilar wrote:
>
> It already is popular. UR/Forth has its HEADER, Gforth has its
> NEXTNAME, etc., etc.. As I said earlier, it is likely that
> /every/ Forth system has provided some kind of solution to the problem
> --- unfortunately, they are all incompatible with each other.
>
> I don't know if SwiftForth has something like :NAME or not (because my
> $500 SwiftForth compiler doesn't work anymore), but I'll bet its in
> there somewhere. The reason I say this is because it is good
> programming practice to write a low-level word such as :NAME and then
> define colon on top of it, rather than just write colon by itself ---
> that is factoring, which is pretty much the foundation of Forth style.
> Assuming that whoever wrote SwiftForth was highly skilled (which I
> think is true), then he most likely did it this way.
Sure, every Forth has lower-level factors of the primary defining words,
but they differ from one implementation to another, and since those of
us who spend our lives writing applications, as well as our customers,
don't really see a need for access to them, there hasn't been any
interest in standardizing them.
>
> Maybe it is an undocumented word that is only available to Forth Inc.
> employees. SwiftForth is closed-source, so there is likely a lot of
> cool stuff hidden in there that customers (me) don't know about.
I think you have more source than you may realize. We don't release
much source with the free version, but most of the source for the
kernel and extensions is included with even the cheaper paid version,
and even the source for the metacompiler (with the optimizer) is
included with the professional version.
>
> BTW, I know a guy who wrote a compiler for a BASIC with Pascal-like
> extensions. He started out with the 65c02 in the 1980s, then moved up
> to the 65c816, and then on to the Pentium series. Recently he got a
> letter from some astronomers in Turkey who were still using his old
> 65c816 system to control their telescope. They had made some kind of
> hardware modification (I think adding RAM beyond 64K) and his compiler
> had failed to work properly. They were upset and wanted the problem
> fixed immediately. They had paid good money for that compiler after
> all --- never mind that this was 15 years ago for a processor that
> nobody uses anymore. Anyway, he dug out the old source-code, fixed the
> problem, and emailed them a new eprom image at no charge. I can
> definitely respect that kind of business ethic. That is the way that I
> would do business (if I owned my own company, of course).
Well, we don't know what kind of business relationship that development
was done under, of how extensive the fix was, or how your friend makes a
living. But all of the software products that I use that were developed
by people whose livelihood comes only from those products depend on
people paying for major upgrades to cover the cost of providing those
upgrades. A major upgrade costs at least a man-month, often more, to
produce, test, and document. Charging a small amount for major upgrades
to customers whose last purchase was some time in the past is standard
practice.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

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