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From: Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Olympic Spririt for Forth
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"Elizabeth D. Rather" <erat...@forth.com> writes:
> A data type check certainly doesn't guarantee you've got the "right
> stuff." 

This was about stack effect, or correspondingly (in other languages)
making sure that the caller passed the right number of args to the
callee.  

> I realize that programmers who have felt comforted by syntax/data type
> checking compilers feel a little naked getting used to Forth, but with
> a little experience you'll understand the Forth programming/testing
> cycle and feel more comfortable.

I've written enough C code in my life to appreciate the difference
between having to find the bug by examining the state of memory with
gdb, and having the Python (etc.) interpreter tell me "wrong number of
args at line 237, called from line 415", showing the source code at each
of those two lines.  I see the mismatch, say "oops" and fix the code.
(# of args isn't a good example of this, since C checks that statically,
but you get the idea).