Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

["Michael Pender" <mpender@hotmail.com>]

John B. Matthews <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
nospam-967967.21253716072003@clmboh1-nws3.columbus.rr.com">news:nospam-967967.21253716072003@clmboh1-nws3.columbus.rr.com...
>
> Logo was a delightful environment, but not the only "serious" recursive
> stack machine in wide use on Apple II.
>
> Apple's UCSD Pascal implemented a very efficient stack machine. Each
> stack frame had a static and dynamic link to allow recursion from an
> arbitrary nesting level.

Apple Pascal was a half-baked implementation of the language that offered
very limited system access.  It was a compiled Fortran program that
inherited all of the limitations of the Fortran language, as well as those
of Pascal.

For example, a program could not have more than 3 files open at once,
system-wide.

>
> Every implementation of Forth I saw on the Apple II (including the FIG
> Forth I adapted to ProDOS) used at least two stacks. Recursion was not
> as syntactically transparent as Pascal, but it was quite efficient.

I never played much with Forth, so I'll withhold any opinion on that.

- Mike