Hello Mike,

you're on a Squeak! Smalltalk list and you wonder why you're running into so
many 13%ers?

Actually many Smaltalk devotees were Forth (Dave Thomas of Carleton U and OTI
fame,) and Neon devotees (my humble self,) before discovering ST-80 (in my case
on 4 diskettes from Apple for my 512ke Mac) before we both got into
Smalltalk/V.

I still think TILs are great and I have MOPS on my Mac. Okay, I have Perl,
Roaster (Java), C, Lisp, three flavors of Smalltalk, RealBasic, etc.

I used to have an Osborne 1 too (the first ones with the beige fiberglass
sewing machine case,) and I used it as a language lab and had every language
implemented for the Z80 on diskettes for it. Janus Ada, Pascals, Mouse (I knew
Peter Grogono at the time,) C, Tiny-C, Basics out the wazoo, PL/I subset-G
Lisps, Prologs, Fortrans (No COBOL please, I had some self-respect :-). (It was
even useful when later I wrote and implemented my own Pascal-like language for
a lame-*ss Keronics EDS Point-4 DataGeneral knock-off machine.)

We're probably all reverse Polish notation freaks and HP calculator lovers too.

What we "grok" the remaining 87% of the MIS population just doesn't get. Its
lonely at the top :-)

-Charles-A.

Mike Thomas wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> > Apropos extendable languages.  Forth is IMHO the best extendable language
> > ever designed.  Programming in Forth is making up new words by combining
> > existing words until your program is a simple (but complex) word.
>
> I keep seeing Forth mentioned on this mailing list - nowhere else.  I once
> was a hard core Forth user on an Osborne 1 - modelling crystal aggregation.
>
> Why is it that there are so many non-mainstream computer language
> users/lovers here?
>
> Are you all wanderers in cyberspace, fearful of the mainstream computer
> language imperialists?  Perfectionists looking for the ultimate computer
> language?  Outcasts?  Snobs?
>
> At any particular time I don't use most of the languages I am fascinated
> with (including Smalltalk/Squeak) for anything constructive, and yet I am
> irresistably drawn to them - lurking on about half a dozen computer language
> lists.  I am always curious as to why people choose to exist so far from the
> mainstream.  Also about what makes a particular language useful or
> meaningful to different people?
>
> Cheers
>
> Mike Thomas.