Re: Why dial-a-standard is not a thing in Forth

Although it's wonderful to list in detail what might have caused the
error - and how to fix it - sometimes all you need is a clue to
hang a picture on.

Well, my life would be quite miserable if iForth did not give
me an error message, a stack-trace, and the file + line-number
where the error occurred. I know quite well how to fix errors,
the problem is to first find where they are (in a 10,000 line
program) so that I can check Git for my changes and the
surrounding text for 'documentation' on things I changed
6 months ago.
('Documentation' is in many cases just this programmer's
description of how he hopes his code works and never
afterwards updated to reality.)
Once the error is found, I break out my trusty ^^ tool to set a
printing break-point (with extra code to give variable and
pointer information, or to skip breaking until the umpteenth
iteration or some other computable event).
In very difficult cases I attach a C debugging environment to
trace memory overwrites, but in almost all other situations
Forth is *much* easier for debugging. C debuggers are getting
better though, they are able to evaluate sizable pieces of code
interactively nowadays but no 'on-the-spot' macros or accurate
and immediate on-the-spot re-compiles yet.
-marcel