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From: Dan Wilcox <wilcox@cfht.hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: My 2 pence on Forth
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Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 17:24:48 GMT
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gcouger@jsun.okstate.edu (Gordon Couger) wrote:
>
> In article <D3qt05.F7L@world.std.com>,
> Patrick M Brennan <pbrennan@world.std.com> wrote:
> >Hi guys :
> >
> >I used to program professionally in Forth, and I was able
> >to appreciate its advantages and disadvantages.  I also
> >like C a great deal, but I can think of circumstances
> >where I would prefer either one over the other.
>
Years ago while still in school, I wrote a robot controller
in Forth on an Apple II.  It worked really well.  It was very
easy to build on basic movement commands to make complex
behavior.

I don't recall the brand of Forth that I used, but it didn't
have the weird page storage normally associated with Forth.
It did have RPN, but once you got used to that, it was real
easy to develop stuff with.

I know that "real" programmers may not like things about
Forth, but since I am a hardware type and write code for
real things that have to be controlled in the real world
in a reasonable development schedule, I use whatever seems
to fit the job the best at the time.

For the future person(s) that may have to maintain my code,
I try to write very good documentation.  But for the average
robot builder, they are trying to make something work for
themselves and usually don't have to worry about some other
person trying to figure out what they were trying to do.  One
word of caution here, tho.  Even if you are not planing for
someone else to figure out your code, document it well enough
that you can figure it out the next time you have to work on it.

So, does anyone know of a Forth that will work with the Miniboard?

Dan Wilcox

