in reply to Re: On TMTOWTDIness
in thread On TMTOWTDIness

I don't think there's any language except perhaps C which is as flexible
...
I think there's a lot to be said for looking at other code, and the Monastery provides an entertaining gateway into the insights of others that no other community website brings forth.
You name it. Since you have assembler roots, you will surely have heard of FORTH, a language that seems forgotten but is still very alive and kicking :-)

It allows mixing of interpretation and compilation state, it is interactive as well as compiled, implemented both in software and in hardware - it is arguably more flexible than C.

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

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Re^3: On TMTOWTDIness
by samizdat (Vicar) on May 16, 2007 at 15:47 UTC
    Indeed I have, and waaaay back in '86 I worked with a visual inspection platform whose recognizer was built in FORTH. Awesome stuff.

    FORTH's flexibility is of a different kind, though. Its flexibility coms from its ease of extensibility, not from syntax flexibility. FORTH and LISP have much in common in that respect, but that's a different thread entirely. I would argue that both of those languages are very rigid in their syntax but also very minimal in syntactic requirements. In other words, there's only one way to write them, but lots of ways to extend them. Lots of ways to implement them, too, which is the flexibility you're pointing to.

    Don Wilde
    "There's more than one level to any answer."
[reply]
      In other words, there's only one way to write them, but lots of ways to extend them. Lots of ways to implement them, too, which is the flexibility you're pointing to.

      Dead on. Perl virtual machine in FORTH, anyone? :-)

      --shmem 

      _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}
[reply]
        Dead on. Perl virtual machine in FORTH, anyone? :-)

        That's really an obsession of yours, ain't it? ;-)

[reply]

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