From: Mark Probert <probertm@...>
Date: 2002-12-06T07:29:24+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] ratlast 0.1 -- embedded FORTH in Ruby


Hi, Rich.

Thank for your interest.

At 06:19 AM 12/6/2002 +0900, you wrote:
>Mark,
>
>     I'm not nocking ya and I don't have a clue about FORTH... so... why
>would I use FORTH instead of Ruby?

FORTH is good for some things that Ruby is less strong on.  One of the
main "advantages" of FORTH is that when you define a word, you are
actually extending the language.  The mechanism for doing this is
very efficient.

The main idea that I have for ratlast is as a user-extensible command
language for Ruby applications.  For example, what do you do if you have
a running Ruby system that you can't take down, yet you have to add some
functionality?  That is very easy to do using ratlast.

Not convinced?  Me either ;-). I did this cause I could, really.  FORTH
is an excellent language and unusual language, and, as I said, a lot
of fun to work with.  It has a very quick test cycle that encourages
on-the-spot testing.  Try it and you'll see.

>     Where can I go to learn FORTH?
Have a look at

         http://www.taygeta.com/forthlit.html

Julian Noble's primer is a good start.

-mark.