EuroForth 2008 will be held at TU Wien in Vienna, Austria. I hope you already have your 2008 calendars, so you can immediately note the dates:
May-June : Registration becomes available June 27: Deadline for draft papers (academic stream) August 12: Notification of acceptance of academic stream papers August 19: Registration deadline September 15: Deadline for camera-ready paper submission (academic and industrial stream) September 25-26: Forth200x meeting September 26-28: EuroForth 2008
Finally, the EuroForth homepage has moved: it is currently residing at <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/>, and has a permanent home at <http://www.euroforth.org/>; this site and the old site currently redirect to the current page. Thanks to Peter Knaggs for maintaining the web site up to 2007, for providing the content and for the redirections.
> EuroForth 2008 will be held at TU Wien in Vienna, Austria. I hope you > already have your 2008 calendars, so you can immediately note the > dates:
> May-June : Registration becomes available > June 27: Deadline for draft papers (academic stream) > August 12: Notification of acceptance of academic stream papers > August 19: Registration deadline > September 15: Deadline for camera-ready paper submission > (academic and industrial stream) > September 25-26: Forth200x meeting > September 26-28: EuroForth 2008
> Finally, the EuroForth homepage has moved: it is currently residing at > <http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/euroforth/>, and has a > permanent home at <http://www.euroforth.org/>; this site and the old > site currently redirect to the current page. Thanks to Peter Knaggs > for maintaining the web site up to 2007, for providing the content and > for the redirections.
Slava Pestov <sl...@jedit.org> wrote Re: EuroForth 2008 announcement and other EuroForth stuff
> On Dec 12, 1:28 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: >> I noted with interest; "Klaus Schleisiek: Dying Forth". Would a >> summary of his argument be possible?
The "Forth is dying" troll is now a classic. Every time an article is posted in the news about Forth, hordes of trolls inevitably post the text of "Forth is dying" on CLF. Amazingly, even now it still gets people responding to it. The text has evolved somewhat over the ages, but the current common version is as follows:
It is official; DDJ now confirms: Forth is dying. One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Forth community when IDC confirmed that Forth market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all embedded systems. Coming close on the heels of a recent DDJ survey which plainly states that Forth has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Forth is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Dr. Dobb's Journal comprehensive embedded systems test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Forth's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Forth faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Forth because Forth is dying. Things are looking very bad for Forth. As many of us are already aware, Forth continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
LSE64 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time LSE64 developers Jeff Fox, Mike Coughlin and Pete Werty only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: LSE64 is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Gforth leader Anton states that there are 7000 users of Gforth. How many users of Gforth are there? Let's see. The number of Gforth versus LSE64 posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 LSE64 users. Forth/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of LSE64 posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Forth/OS. A recent article put Gforth at about 80 percent of the Forth market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Gforth users. This is consistent with the number of Gforth Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Silicon Valley, abysmal sales and so on, LSE64 went out of business and was taken over by IntellasSys who sell another troubled OS. Now IntellaSys is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Forth has steadily declined in market share. Forth is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Forth is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Forth continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save Forth from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Forth is dead.
Fact: Forth is dying
There are a number of reasons why this seems to be such a successful troll: 1. Target audience: Forth users are often very proud of the fact they use Forth, so there is always someone who is more than willing to defend it. 2. Easily knocked down "facts". The paragraph estimating the number of Forth users for example is very clearly absurd. The fact that many of the claims are easy to rebut increases the likelihood someone will respond. 3. Incorrect claims. For example, the DDJ survey actually shows that a large portion of the most reliable machines in deep space are running Forth. 4. It portrays opinions as facts. The tone is authoritative, which further encourages people to reply to correct the "mistakes". The fact that it is clearly absurd makes it even funnier when people reply :o)
BSD is dying has spawned a number of children. The text to Mike Coughlin's explanation of why he left Forth, and "What we can learn from Forth" are examples.
Overall, its impressive that after so long it still gets people responding, but it is kind of irritating that a large portion of posts in all Forth articles are now Forth is dying crapfloods.
> Slava Pestov <sl...@jedit.org> wrote Re: EuroForth 2008 announcement and other EuroForth stuff
> > On Dec 12, 1:28 am, Alex McDonald <b...@rivadpm.com> wrote: > >> I noted with interest; "Klaus Schleisiek: Dying Forth". Would a > >> summary of his argument be possible?
> The "Forth is dying" troll is now a classic. Every time an article is > posted in the news about Forth, hordes of trolls inevitably post the > text of "Forth is dying" on CLF. Amazingly, even now it still gets > people responding to it. The text has evolved somewhat over the ages, > but the current common version is as follows:
> It is official; DDJ now confirms: Forth is dying. One more crippling > bombshell hit the already beleaguered Forth community when IDC confirmed > that Forth market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a > fraction of 1 percent of all embedded systems. Coming close on the > heels of a recent DDJ survey which plainly states that Forth has > lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've > known all along. Forth is collapsing in complete disarray, as > fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Dr. Dobb's > Journal comprehensive embedded systems test.
> You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Forth's future. The hand > writing is on the wall: Forth faces a bleak future. In fact there > won't be any future at all for Forth because Forth is dying. Things > are looking very bad for Forth. As many of us are already aware, > Forth continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of > blood.
> LSE64 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its > core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time > LSE64 developers Jeff Fox, Mike Coughlin and Pete Werty only > serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be > any doubt: LSE64 is dying.
> Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
> Gforth leader Anton states that there are 7000 users of Gforth. How > many users of Gforth are there? Let's see. The number of Gforth > versus LSE64 posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. > Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 LSE64 users. Forth/OS > posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of LSE64 posts. > Therefore there are about 700 users of Forth/OS. A recent article put > Gforth at about 80 percent of the Forth market. Therefore there are > (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Gforth users. This is consistent with the > number of Gforth Usenet posts.
> Due to the troubles of Silicon Valley, abysmal sales and so on, > LSE64 went out of business and was taken over by IntellasSys who > sell another troubled OS. Now IntellaSys is also dead, its corpse > turned over to yet another charnel house.
> All major surveys show that Forth has steadily declined in market > share. Forth is very sick and its long term survival prospects are > very dim. If Forth is to survive at all it will be among OS > dilettante dabblers. Forth continues to decay. Nothing short of a > cockeyed miracle could save Forth from its fate at this point in > time. For all practical purposes, Forth is dead.
> Fact: Forth is dying
> There are a number of reasons why this seems to be such a successful > troll: > 1. Target audience: Forth users are often very proud of the > fact they use Forth, so there is always someone who is more than > willing to defend it. > 2. Easily knocked down "facts". The paragraph estimating the number > of Forth users for example is very clearly absurd. The fact that > many of the claims are easy to rebut increases the likelihood > someone will respond. > 3. Incorrect claims. For example, the DDJ survey actually shows > that a large portion of the most reliable machines in deep space are > running Forth. > 4. It portrays opinions as facts. The tone is authoritative, which > further encourages people to reply to correct the "mistakes". The > fact that it is clearly absurd makes it even funnier when people reply :o)
> BSD is dying has spawned a number of children. The text to Mike > Coughlin's explanation of why he left Forth, and "What we can learn > from Forth" are examples.
> Overall, its impressive that after so long it still gets people > responding, but it is kind of irritating that a large portion of > posts in all Forth articles are now Forth is dying crapfloods.
My apologies if I have stood on one of your bunions.
This was one of two discussions that did not result from a workshop, and had no paper associated with it. Having met Klaus at euroForth 2006, I was interested in his opinion.
>There are a number of reasons why this seems to be such a successful >troll: > 1. Target audience: Forth users are often very proud of the > fact they use Forth, so there is always someone who is more than > willing to defend it.
Actually, you see such articles in many newsgroups for minority languages. Last I looked (several years ago), most articles in comp.lang.modula-2 were "Modula-2 is dying" articles.
>Overall, its impressive that after so long it still gets people >responding, but it is kind of irritating that a large portion of >posts in all Forth articles are now Forth is dying crapfloods.
My impression is that the "Forth is dying" theme is less frequent in comp.lang.forth than it was 10-15 years ago. Most comp.lang.forth regulars have seen the topic often enough that they are through with it, and most newbies know that Forth is a minority language and don't have delusions of grandeur. The only one who has tried to play this troll in the last few years is John Doty; he's an old Forther, but relatively new to c.l.f (at least he was not here when "Forth is dying" postings were en vogue), and he thinks that he can hype LSE64 by playing that troll.
[Fullquote shortened to the probably relevant part; please don't quote everthing!]
>I noted with interest; "Klaus Schleisiek: Dying Forth". Would a >summary of his argument be possible?
I don't remember much (I did not find the topic that interesting), so here's just my impression: Klaus has finally noticed that Forth is no longer as popular as in the 80s, especially when looking at events like EuroForth, so his introduction to the workshop sounded much like one of the "Forth is dyning" postings in c.l.f from the '90s. He suggested having a nice funeral or something. IIRC the workshop then mainly discussed some ways of making Forth events and publications like EuroForth more popular.
> >I noted with interest; "Klaus Schleisiek: Dying Forth". Would a > >summary of his argument be possible?
> I don't remember much (I did not find the topic that interesting), so > here's just my impression: Klaus has finally noticed that Forth is no > longer as popular as in the 80s, especially when looking at events > like EuroForth, so his introduction to the workshop sounded much like > one of the "Forth is dyning" postings in c.l.f from the '90s. He > suggested having a nice funeral or something. IIRC the workshop then > mainly discussed some ways of making Forth events and publications > like EuroForth more popular.
Anton Ertl wrote: > The only one who has tried to play this > troll in the last few years is John Doty; he's an old Forther, but > relatively new to c.l.f (at least he was not here when "Forth is > dying" postings were en vogue), and he thinks that he can hype LSE64 > by playing that troll.
Not at all. LSE64 is what I've got: it is not really what I want. It makes money for me by being a useful tool, but it's pretty crude. I don't sell it: you want it, you can have it (GPL). It's better for my purposes than Standard Forth, but that, of course, is faint praise indeed.
What I want is a 21st century Forth capable of bringing back old Forthers who've given up, and recruiting the youngsters who use things like Python in embedded systems because there's nothing better that makes sense to them. Standard Forth represents what this community once embraced but now has thoroughly rejected. LSE64 is at best a small exploratory step toward something more usable. ColorForth is fascinating, but not, I think, something that can be embraced by a significant user community.
There's enough brain power in this group to create a user-oriented 21st century Forth, but it requires major excavation of heads from sand.
-- John Doty, Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ -- Specialization is for robots.
Anton Ertl wrote: > I don't remember much (I did not find the topic that interesting), so > here's just my impression: Klaus has finally noticed that Forth is no > longer as popular as in the 80s, especially when looking at events > like EuroForth,
And it's even less popular than in the 90s...
> so his introduction to the workshop sounded much like > one of the "Forth is dyning" postings in c.l.f from the '90s. He > suggested having a nice funeral or something. IIRC the workshop then > mainly discussed some ways of making Forth events and publications > like EuroForth more popular.
As a summary, one could say that the events are organized in a less enthusiastic and energetic way as they were in the days when Forth took up (even though the persons are the same), so the solution found was to put the message-spreading work and similar organization work on more shoulders.
