Re: Parsing timestamps?

minforth@gmx.net (minforth) writes:

Now there are some guys who behave
like self-declared Forth mullahs who shout heresy against
those who don't DUP ROT enough.

The more common complaint is that you use some feature they dislike
(typically locals) when you would otherwise DUP ROT instead.  But they
then like to tell us that real Forthers can refactor the code such
that the DUP ROT becomes unnecessary.  The discussion often stops
there.  But in some cases, we also read the praises of using global
variables.  Why are locals bad in their opinion and global variables
good?

Is theirs the Forth philosophy?? Really?? I thought the main
Forth principle was "keep it simple".  When stack reordering
is the easier way, do it. When using locals is the easier way,
do it.

The question here is: What is "it" that one should keep simple.

One answer: Keep the Forth system simple (even at the cost of making
Forth source code harder to write).

Your answer is different: Keep the Forth source code simple (and you
mean "easy to write").

I think focusing on only one of these aspects does not minimize the
overall complexity.  And if somebody argues with simplicity but
ignores the big picture, the argument has no merit.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
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