Re: GS Forth II

[dpeschel@u.washington.edu (Derek Peschel)]

In article <go17938@pro-palmtree.cts.com>,
Richard Der <rder@pro-palmtree.cts.com> wrote:

>Question: would knowledge of BASIC stunt learning Forth? It has been
>said that BASIC programmers have a hard time moving on to Pascal
>sometimes.

I hope I'm not being rude by jumping in.

I would say no.  Pascal is quite similar to BASIC, so people could switch but
not use any of the new constructs.  Forth is very different from BASIC; those
differences are a much more important part of the learning curve.  (I'd say the
stack architecture automatically biases Froth toward structure, incidentally.)

There is the matter of style -- not writing long Forth procedures, using
sensible variable names, using hairy machine language to "cheat" only when
necessary -- but that's unrelated to BASIC experience.  _Starting Forth_
emphasizes style and also gives good reasons for using it.

-- Derek