The C is dead, long live the C

[Tony Hammitt]

I agree with Monty here.  Colorizing is great for classifying what kind
of text you're looking at, but to make it part of the actual language
structure is a bad idea.  How do you extend the language, add a fourth
primary color? Good luck.  Who decides what colors mean what?  Some
committe, or some other person whose taste sucks?  You _couldn't_
change from the default scheme, even if it's ugly or hurts your eyes,
your code wouldn't compile (they may have a way around this, but how
would someone _else_ read _your_ code?)

I'll stick with C or Python.  At least they're still readable on a
printout...

I certainly think that colorizing editors are very useful, and they
will be used more and more until looking at code in black and white is
considered retrocomputing.  We may even get to the point where code
editors put squiggly red underlines under syntax errors =-]  Or use
blink tags for any global variable...

Wouldn't color forth take a special editor just to be written?  Good
luck convincing a large enough set of people to use the language when
they can't even use their favorite tools.

Certainly languages can evolve, take the best features from C, C++,
Java Perl and Fortran95 and mix them together.  Wait, I already
mentioned Python and someone else mentioned Ruby...  Anyway, we'll all
be using a different programming language in a few years.  It will be
the then-current buzzword compliant super easy to use or super quick to
execute or maybe even both 'language of the future'.  Just like all of
the others before it.

It doesn't matter what form the code has, it still has to execute a
series of instructions to manipulate data in some way.  Heck, even
quantum computers still manipulate data.

There are other realities we have to put up with:  People have to agree
what a language is supposed to look like.  Someone has to figure out
how to make a computer do what the programmer asked it to do. More
people have to determine whether the compiler/interpreter works in a
provably correct way.  People have to have an incentive to start using
the language.  The language will change after people start using it.
This takes time.

People will want to be able to print out their code or have other
programmers be able to read it.  This is a reality, too.  Basing a
language on color scheme will never take off.  There are no advantages
so no one will ever use it.  It's an interesting novelty, that's all.
95% of computer languages never take off.  color forth will be one of
them.  Just an informed opinion.

Regards,

	Tony

"Monty J. Harder" wrote:
> 
>  Adam Turk wrote:
> 
> >http://www.colorforth.com/
> 
> Intriguing. I'll have to look at that further. Obviously an intelligent man
> with some good ideas. I like the idea of color-based source. I wonder how
> that could be extended.
> 
>   Color-based source is an idiotic idea.  Right off the bat, what do you do
> with red-green color blindness?  B/W printers?  Using color to highlight
> information that's already being conveyed in some other way (italics, bold,
> underlining, shaded background?) is fine, but color can't be the only
> method.
>