Visual Forth?
Alan
speaking, of course, of a GUI programming environment similar to Hypercard
or Visual BASIC, where "code snippets" underlie the various tools,
forms, and gizmos on the screen. Since Forth is supposedly so good for
"device control" applications, I'd think it might be a good underlying
language for controlling the various "devices" in a GUI environment.
Also, Forth's natural bent toward short definitions and lots of
factoring might give it an advantage as the base language behind the
scenes in such a GUI environment.
In Jeff Duntemann's final Dr. Dobbs column (April) he said something like:
"The language wars are over. The upcoming war, if there is to be one, will
be between visual programming languages and traditional languages
(including both OOP and non-OOP languages as "traditional"). Having
seen Hypercard and Visual BASIC, I think he is right on about "visual"
languages being perhaps even more important that OOP. I'm not so sure
how to feel about his statement that "the language wars are over" (by
which he meant that the Algol family of structured languages have pretty
much taken over the world...modern BASIC, C, Pascal, etc. look remarkably
similar).
Of course, we all know that WWII continued for some forgotten Japanese
soldiers until the 1980's and some people believe that Japan has never
considered WWII over at all -- it just switched tactics and weapons. :-)
Would Forth have to be changed extensively to make it a good choice for
an underlying visual programming environment? In particular, would the
stack, as we currently know it, be useful in such an environment? I'd
be particularly interested in the thoughts of Forth vendors and those
who work in a GUI environment and have seen a "visual" language. If
you haven't seen such a language you really aren't competent to
comment, IMO.
--
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al...@tree.SAC.CA.US or uunet!csusac!tree!alan
James Hague
>
>Is anyone aware of a "Visual" Forth (or Forth-like) language? I'm
>speaking, of course, of a GUI programming environment similar to Hypercard
>or Visual BASIC, where "code snippets" underlie the various tools,
>forms, and gizmos on the screen.
You might want to check out WinForth from LMI. It's not a Visual
BASIC clone, but is supposedly a version of Forth tightly integrated
with the Windows GUI. The interactive nature of Forth would make this
a very powerful tool IMO.
>In Jeff Duntemann's final Dr. Dobbs column (April) he said something like:
>"The language wars are over. The upcoming war, if there is to be one, will
>be between visual programming languages and traditional languages
>(including both OOP and non-OOP languages as "traditional"). Having
>seen Hypercard and Visual BASIC, I think he is right on about "visual"
>languages being perhaps even more important that OOP.
IMO Visual Languages have their place, but I also feel that they
are yet another attempt to run away from the horrid truth that
programming is difficult and requires careful thought.
Dave Ruske
: In article 3...@tree.SAC.CA.US, al...@tree.SAC.CA.US (Alan) writes:
: >
: >Is anyone aware of a "Visual" Forth (or Forth-like) language? I'm
: >speaking, of course, of a GUI programming environment similar to Hypercard
: >or Visual BASIC, where "code snippets" underlie the various tools,
: >forms, and gizmos on the screen.
:
: You might want to check out WinForth from LMI. It's not a Visual
: BASIC clone, but is supposedly a version of Forth tightly integrated
: with the Windows GUI. The interactive nature of Forth would make this
: a very powerful tool IMO.
IMO, WinForth is indeed a powerful product. Since most the work I've
done to date in Windows has been low-level device driver code in assembler,
my main application for it has been test code for the drivers. It is also
handy for interactively experimenting with third-party DLLs (or the Windows
API itself for that matter). For this type of work, it's hard to beat.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't call it a "visual" language, anymore than I'd
call MS C 7.00 "visual". It is a Windows-hosted development environment,
and it has a wordset which hides a lot of the Windows API complexity for
many tasks, but it isn't "visual" in the sense of Visual Basic. Not
that I think it couldn't be... if LMI sold 10,000 they'd probably have
the capital to really throw some development at the idea, maybe even
adding VBX support and leveraging off VB's success... but I suspect that
the number of people who (1) want to use Forth, (2) want to *BUY* a
Forth compiler, and (3) want to program under Windows is probably less
than the population of Wisconsin... :-)
VB's development environment is pretty slick, but the language behind
it is painful to use if you want something they haven't provided (a byte
data type, for instance; byte arrays get handled as strings, using Mid$,
Left$, etc. instead of an array index [yuk!]). I see no reason why
Forth couldn't do the "visual" stuff just as well: assigning properties
and executing methods on forms/controls could probably be done with a
syntax similar to many OOF extensions. The other sizable piece is the
visual development environment itself, which in VB's case (as I understand
it) was purchased by Microsoft from someone else.
In summary, WinForth is a nice tool, but I don't think it qualifies as
a "visual" language in the sense I got from the original post. But if
someone with some time to kill comes up with a visual Forth or an
extension of some sorts to WinForth, I'll guarantee you at least one
paying customer! ;-)
: IMO Visual Languages have their place, but I also feel that they
: are yet another attempt to run away from the horrid truth that
: programming is difficult and requires careful thought.
Hey, if a tool can make my life easier, I'll use it! I get paid for
what I produce, not for how much pain I had to endure in writing it!
[Footnote: I wish I could have commented here on Visual C++, but I
haven't yet been able to free up 70M of disk space to install the
sucker!]
Cheers,
Dave Ruske ...!uwm.edu!moci!dave
Sr. Software Engineer GEnie: D.RUSKE1
ICOM, Inc. 414-321-8000
[Opinions mine, not ICOM's; no affiliation with LMI].
Kenneth Kasajian
I'd
>be particularly interested in the thoughts of Forth vendors and those
>who work in a GUI environment and have seen a "visual" language. If
>you haven't seen such a language you really aren't competent to
>comment, IMO.
>--
Ouch.
Actually, FORTH, Inc's EXPRESS has some GUI capability with a english
like syntax for its process code. You can even make icons such as
"buttons" in the graphics editor and then atach polyFORTH words (macros)
to it to behave as the button's "role". Since you get all the source code,
you can extend system to whatever you want.
Kenny