Post by rickmanIs this a joke???
Yes, it is a joke that just a handful of people spend their time,
money, and effort trying to set up sites to promote Forth. There
should be more.
I've never been a fan of the "if you build it, they will come"
mentality that says if you build a web site, people will flock to it
and magically populate it with content. I'm even less of a fan of
setting up such sites with placeholder content (in this case, blank
pages with provocative names like "Chuck Moore"). It's the equivalent
of someone setting up forum software, creating dozens of discussion
areas, each with nothing in them. The intent is obvious-- the
creators of those sites want to form a framework for the site to grow
from. But more often, it has the opposite effect-- people visit the
site, see no actual content, get bored, and never come back. A better
approach is to gather a handful of prolific writers to put significant
content on the site first, and then announce it to the public.
I also have some problems with the quality of the content that's on
there. There is the bizarre suggestion that Forth programs evolve but
C programs don't-- that they are "complicated from the beginning"--
suggests someone who hasn't done significant C work (or who does, but
does so *badly*). Equally weird is the notion that in Forth, a word
has singular meaning (ignoring that the programmer can freely change
meaning) and thus the language is "finite." This then blends into a
statement that in C, there are an infinite number of possible
statements. That's obviously wrong-- the C compiler only allows a
limited subset of them, and the rules are quite well defined. But
presumably the person who wrote that statement apparently doesn't
understand the rules of C to know that while a symbol like "*" can
have multiple meanings, those meanings are easily understood in
context. It's no different from in English how a word like "set" can
have dozens of meanings, but when I say, "set this on the table" or
"is this part of the set" or "wait for the Jello to set" there is no
ambiguity because of context.
So I have problems with the form and the quality of content of the
site. But even so, I applaud the site's creator for the effort and
hope it inspires more people to do the same (or actually, better).
Here are three simple ideas that might inspire others:
1. Set up a wiki (or for wiki's that allow hierarchy, a section
within the wiki) where each word of the ANS and other significant
Forth standards are given their own page. Divide up that page
according to standard, and for each provide stack pictures and
descriptions of the word. Then, have a section for each word where
notes and discussion about usage, history, warnings, and other
suggestions are provided. Finally, provide that from a consistent URL
so that Forth development environments can consistently reference it
using a syntax like "about X" where "X" is the word you're interested
in.
2. Encourage Forth vendors and significant community members to
actively blog about Forth. Then, set up a "planet" RSS aggregator
where people can go to quickly summarize what's new in the world of
Forth.
3. Someone take on the role of summarizing what is current. For
example, every month in "Linux Journal" I look forward to the "diff -
u" column which is a summary of Linux kernel developments. That
column is short, refrains from too much of the author injecting their
own commentary, and provides a way to know what is going on without
having to constantly monitor hundreds of conversations across kernel
development. For Forth, that would mean monitoring comp.lang.forth,
pinging vendors for developments, monitoring standards discussions,
etc. The key is a (largely) dispassionate summarization.