From: no.email@nospam.invalid   
      
   dxf  writes:   
   > With apparently little issue for the case presented.  The push is   
   > to write idiot-proof code that can be used anywhere.  Moore calls   
   > that 'solving the general problem' - which he eschews.   
      
   Didn't one of the Chuck Moore quotes you posted say using the stacks was   
   better for information hiding than using globals?  That includes the   
   return or locals stack, of course.  Your computer hardware has the   
   capability of accessing inside the stack randomly, and Forth has words   
   like 2ROT which reach up to 6 levels deep in the parameter stack.   
   What's wrong with being able to give names to the cells?  I don't   
   understand the obsession with refusing to use those capabilities of your   
   hardware.   
      
   The central idea of Forth to me is its traditional implementation as a   
   threaded interpreter with its extremely simple one-pass compiler.  That   
   made it possible to make a complete interactive development environment   
   on a 1970s minicomputer with a floppy disc.  All the language features   
   like the stack oriented VM are just incidental affordances on the route   
   to that simple interpreter.  To the extent that there is a cult of the   
   stack machine, I don't belong to it.   
      
   > Moore calls that 'solving the general problem' - which he eschews.   
      
   The idea as I saw it was don't do extra work to solve the general   
   problem, if a simpler approach solves the immediate problem at hand.   
      
   If the general solution takes LESS work then the limited one, then doing   
   the extra work for the limited solution is just masochism.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)