What I've learned so far...

[Tom Novelli]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 11:15:56AM +0100, Massimo Dentico wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Mar 2003 19:30:36 -0800 (PST), Brian T Rice <water@tunes.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Tom Novelli wrote:
> >
> >>I stand by my conclusion.  C translates directly to Forth, but some really
> >>easy optimizations are done in the process.  Types make this possible, and
> >>infix syntax helps a little also.  For an equal effort, C is faster.  It's
> >>also easier to read and maintain.  I won't be drawn into a holy war.  I'm
> >>just saying Forth has no place in Tunes.
> >
> >Just so things are technically clear, would you say that "infix"ity is not
> >the exact technically enabling feature so much as it is being able to
> >deduce function arity from the source code? This seems to be what you're
> >referring to, since Lisp would have the same quality and is not infix
> >(except for keyword arguments, which basically "look" infix).
> 
> This will be a feeble excuse: even in Forth words with a variable number
> of  parameters  and/or  results  (stack  items  consumed/produced)   are
> deprecated, so  this is  not really  a problem: if you  check types, for
> example, you also check arity.

Thank you Brian.  Parameters are delimited in C, Lisp, ML, etc.; variable
arity is okay.  The parenthesis are worth typing.  Of course, they get out
of hand in commonplace arithmetic expressions, where infix (with a
precedence hierarchy) is nice; but that's easily added to Forth and Lisp.

Tom Novelli