From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Object-oriented Forth, Neon/Yerk, etc.
Date: 8 Apr 92 22:47:32 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.

Category 3,  Topic 46
Message 144       Sat Mar 28, 1992
M.HORE [Mike]                at 23:48 EST
 
Hi all -- or maybe  hi: all  would be better :-)

I'm Mike Hore, the author of Mops, which has been mentioned a few times on
this topic (see esp. msg 1.  That's right, *one*.  It was apparently my letter
to Bob Loewenstein in March 90 which via several levels of indirection led to
this topic being started!).

GEnie has just arrived in Australia, so after a long electronic isolation,
I've been able to get on the Forth RT at last.  I'm happy to answer any
questions about Mops, and am likely to throw in my $0.02 at any time in
defense of OOP, the Neon/Yerk/Mops way of doing things, and various other
subjects as well  :-)

Mops is definitely still alive and kicking.  It's now System 7 savvy and has
support for AppleEvents.  Although at present it comes with a documentation
file listing the differences to Yerk/Neon, I'm currently revising the Yerk
manual to produce a proper Mops manual. Maybe this will be done in a couple of
months??

OOP doesn't have to take a speed penalty.  In Mops, early-bound method calls
are almost as fast as straight Forth word calls. And they can be in-lined, in
which case they are really equivalent to hand-coded assembly.  I've sent an
article to Joerg Langowski which he may publish in MacTutor (when it
reappears, in April hopefully), in which I show that Mops can beat LS FORTRAN
really comes from the Forth approach to things plus native code compilation
plus peephole optimization.  I'm sure any native code Forth system could do
something similar.  Who says FORTRAN is best for number-crunching?

Mops is available for anonymous ftp at the same site as Yerk:
oddjob.uchicago.edu.  I don't know if it's available on GEnie or via email. 
(If Doug Philips is reading this, could you possibly make it available for
email, if not done already? I'd be very grateful.)


I now want to take up a point raised by Mitch Bradley some time ago, that we
should be concentrating on developing tools etc. for existing OOFs rather than
trying to reinvent the wheel.  We have Yerk/Mops now (and I believe the JForth
ODE isn't much different).  The last two issues of Forth Dimensions have
presented articles with source code to implement a version of Yerk on the PC. 
These work, they're being used for real applications, and they can all evolve
to become better.  If we try to start over from scratch, I think we'll throw
away years of time for a very doubtful advantage.  Moreover, Forthers being
the individualists they are, I doubt that the process would ever converge to
anything looking like a consensus. OOP is just too nebulous.  Or if it did
converge, how long would it take?  5 years?  10 years??  Can we wait that
long?

But these are just my opinions, and a discussion about this would be more than
timely.  If we take 5 years contemplating our navels in the OO area, the world
will pass us by (if it hasn't already).  Let's at least do something
constructive! Yes, I know, it is constructive to be sure you're doing things
right before pushing ahead.  My point is precisely the same as Mitch's, that
the systems in existence now are right enough already, and it's time to move
forward.


Cheers,  Mike.   (I'll include my full signature this time): ---------------
Michael Hore PO Box 821   |  Internet: mikeh@peg.pegasus.oz.au (best)
Nhulunbuy,   |  CompuServe:  100033,3164
    NT 0881  |  GEnie:       M.HORE AUSTRALIA    | ----------------

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