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

[Pierce T.Wetter III]

On Jun 30, 2004, at 6:51 PM, Charles Duffy wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 20:34, Pierce T.Wetter III wrote:
> >   Anyways, what about TCL? I seem to remember the interpreter being
> > pretty minimal. There are a couple of JavaScript interpreters out 
> > there
> > as well.
>
> TCL? JavaScript?
>
> You might be offended by being asked to learn new languages. I'm
> offended by being asked to use bad ones.

 Oh, and something that uses RPN is an example of a "good" language?

 say you whatever ok;

 1 4 5 + *;

 :-)

  The nice thing about JavaScript would be that for the minimal sort of
programming I would expect in a config file, it would be very C like.

 if (blah)
    return x;
  else
    return y;

  Personally, I'd like some sort of tiny-C interpreter.

The problems I see with Furth, irrespective of the details like RPN are:

  1. No debuggers...
  2. No syntax award editing...
  3. No test beds for double checking scripts...

 Anyways, my rule is:

  Is there an O'Reilly book for the language?

  Which Furth fails.

  So while Tom can probably write the interpreter for Furth in less time
then he could figure out how to integrate the scripting language of your
choice, that doesn't make it a good idea. For one thing, is he then 
going to
add lots of debugging support to the interpreter and tla? That will 
take more time.
What about code libraries?

  Having a real language for rule/config files is probably a Good Thing 
(tm).

  I'm not sure Furth is a good thing, based on the two things I've read 
about
it so far.

 Pierce