Re: [Gnu-arch-users] arch roadmap 1 (and "what's tom up to")

[Aaron Bentley]

Tom Lord wrote:

> So, even if you believe furth sucks and language X is better, when
> Furth hits arch, most of the resulting work will benefit an X-binding
> as well.

It's not that I think Furth sucks.  It's that I don't have an opinion of 
Furth, and I hope I don't have to aquire one.

>     > - No one knows Furth
>
> You do in the sense that it's a simpler and more general experession
> of the essense of your favorite language.

Until you've written code in Furth, even *you* don't really know it.  As 
for me, I don't doubt that I could learn Furth, but I picked up Python a 
month ago, and I'd rather focus on that.  Furth raises the barrier to 
entry for tla development and possibly for Arch use as well.  It has the 
potential to reduce the pool of users and contributors to those who are 
willing to learn a new language.

>     > - Furth will take time and effort to develop
>
> To quote some quoters who found a choice quote:
>
>   A line may take us hours, yet if it does not seem a moment's thought
>   All our stitching and unstitching has been as nought.

Okay, let me put it more bluntly.  Furth will take *your* time and 
effort away from tla.  I'm sure you're enjoying breathing life into 
Furth, but since you're tla's maintainer, tla can't progress very far 
while your energies are directed elsewhere.

> Less flippantly, the core "inner interpreter" for furth is weighing in
> at under 3k lines of code.  I think it will be easier to spin off tiny
> (but all compatible) little languages for arch based on this than by
> any other approach.   

This suggests that in order to parse these files in other languages, 
we'll have to implement Furth.  I hope that's not the case.  Current 
Arch configuration files are far more tractable.

> The worst case is that you can think of Furth as little or nothing
> more than that part of the arch API which makes bindings to other
> languages easier.

No, the worst case is that Furth takes more than it gives.  I'm not 
saying that *will* happen, but I'm not saying it won't.

Aaron

--
Aaron Bentley
Director of Technology
Panometrics, Inc.