Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 15:41:34 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: Parag Patel <parag@cgt.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: lisp vs. Forth (was Re: New boot loader and alternate kernels ) Message-ID: <2608.910136494@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 03 Nov 1998 15:19:27 PST." <199811032319.PAA00900@dingo.cdrom.com>
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> About 75k according to: > > http://www.cs.indiana.edu/scheme-repository/imp/siod.html > > Anyone want to cut it "down to size" and see? I don't think you'd gain that much. Sure, you could snip out the Unix programmer's functions and maybe some of the math stuff but then you'd have to add back in some sort of I/O system for talking to the keyboard, disk, and perhaps even various serial devices and that would rapidly bloat things back up. Forth, on the other hand, has the benefit of an I/O model so simplistic that it's (by design) not very hard to just plug it straight into the relevant hardware. I worked on a fig-forth system for the pc532 boot rom and talking straight to SCSI devices and the serial ports from that system was a hell of a lot easier than any 10 other solutions I might be able to think up. > What's the feeling on the lisp vs. Forth argument? lisp is cool, but I think perhaps a bit too weighty for a boot system which is really only looking at the extention language as a way of getting highly custom/conditional behavior for an incredibly small number of applications which need it. Most users, I suspect, will never even see a need to get much beyond the "boot" command. :-) Lisp would be something I'd go more out of my way to implement if I felt that people would be writing short scripts in it frequently, ala the GIMP and its filter plug-ins or GNU emacs or, for that matter, a game called Abuse. If you gotta write a fair amount of code, give me lisp any day. If it's half a page of infrequent customization or testing work, forth is equally godly. I'd put this particular task more in the latter category. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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