Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Parsing timestamps?
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:56:02 -0700
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minforth@gmx.net (minforth) writes:
> Nobody seems to care about that time. Instead, the focus seems to be
> primarily on code runtime, even though the difference is only
> microseconds or less.

Forth was designed for threaded interpreter implementation and the whole
notion of an optimizing Forth compiler is at best an abstraction
inversion.  But, supposedly, VFX compiler output runs 10x as fast as
the same code under an interpreter.

I think in the Moore era, you got two speedups: 1) interpreted Forth was
10x faster than its main competitor, interpreted BASIC; and 2) if your
Forth program was still too slow, you'd identify a few hot spots and
rewrite those in assembler.

Today instead of BASIC we have Python, and interpreted Forth is still a
lot faster than Python.  That speed is sufficient for most things, like
it always was, but even more so on modern hardware.

So I don't see much legitimate complaint about slowdowns due to Forth
locals.  The objection is based on other considerations, either
legitimate ones that I don't yet understand, or essentially bogus ones
that I don't completely see through.  Maybe some combination of the two.