I'd be interested in a Forth.  I think the new 18Fxxx series of PICs due
out (any day now) will revolutionize the field.  They are much more regular
in terms of address space, stacks etc; and getting a good Forth will be
much easier.  Basic 18 certainly looks interesting too.
David

Dan Michaels wrote:

> Jeethu Rao wrote:
> >Dan, you can't change my mind. I've become a Software Stack fanatic.
> >Software Stack is worth the striving for.
> >And I don't think it'll make a PIC analogous to a Basic Stamp
> >in performance.Remember BS is interpreted and PIC native code.
> >running even a simple a = b assignment will take atleast 20-25 cycles
> >on a BS. Thats what makes Java slower than C or C++.
> >
>
> Jeethu, I wasn't really trying to change your mind. I really
> would like to see a good Forth for the PIC [maybe there already
> is one ???]. As I understand it, programmers in India, especially
> Bangalore I believe, have a strong reputation, and I would be
> interested to know what kind of performance you could milk out
> of Forth.
>
> It does have the great advantage of building compact programs,
> of course. In the PC world, I would say my Forth programs are
> maybe 5X smaller than if done in C [using DOS, not windoze].
>
> However, speaking from a more practical perspective, one probably
> could not make much money from a Forth compiler for PIC, if that was
> their intent. Forth was popular a few years ago in the microcontroller
> world, but today Basic and C appear to be the big bread winners,
> so .........
> ============
>
> >Anyway, your've got a good Idea out there. We can make something
> >similar to the BS and we could write a specially optimized interpreter
> >for the production release of that particular program. Sort of pseudo
> >native code (Just like what VB 5 used to do). By pseudo native code,
> >I mean that the whole program would be written as a set of calls to
> >the Run Time Library.
> >
> >A lot faster than BS but just as easy!
> >
>
> Well that is basically what Forth does, of course. The whole program
> is just stored as a series of addresses of functions, and you drill
> down through the levels, passing down your parameters, and eventually
> get down to the core functions, which are in native code [if you
> have a fast implementation]. From benchmarks I recall seeing years
> ago, Forth was typically about 2X or 3X slower than a "compiled" C or
> Basic implementation, but I think on the PIC with stacks implemented
> in s.w., it would be much worse. This is just my gut feeling.
>
> cheers,
> - dan michaels
> www.oricomtech.com
> ========================
>
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