27 Nov
2007
27 Nov
'07
2:39 a.m.
Type checking is that last straw for many. It
can't be a high level
language if it wasn't type checked, could it? Does type checking
really produce better error free code?
In my experience, it does, other things being equal. Which of course
they rarely are - has anyone built what for lack of a better term I
might call a typechecked FORTH engine? I don't really know FORTH as
well as I'd like, but my impression is that doing that would require
enough infrastructure that it would border on reinventing PostScript
(minus the rendering stuff, of course).
If I wanted to do such a thing - to go typechecked but still stay as
close to FORTH as feasible - I'd probably try to start with typechecked
hardware, Lisp Machine style. It'd lose the portability benefit of
FORTH, but for an experiment I think it'd be worth it.
The last point is that most seasoned Forth programmers
actually write
better code in other languages. They bring habits and methods along
with them that allow them to write better code.
I think you'll find this is true of most languages - that the more
languages someone is competent in, the better that person will be at
all of them. Especially so when they're drastically different (for
example, someone who knows only C, Pascal, and Java will be lacking
perspective compared to someone who knows, say, FORTH, Prolog, and
Lisp, because the former three are, for all their differences, the same
in some important respects).
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