FORTH and Hypercard

[simplsol at aol.com]

Jacque,
 I wonder if Scott would come to the same conclusion today.
  On modern computers messages can transverse the entire path in 
nanoseconds. While Rev. definitely feels faster than HC on all the 
computers where I've used it, HC was tolerable even on an 8 MHZ Mac 
Plus of the mid 80's - so passing messages through the entire hierarchy 
is not excessively burdensome. The ability to intercept and redefine 
handles would be worth a modest speed tradeoff today - and we are 
scheduled to have 10 GHZ computers by the end of this decade.
  Of course the debate is academic. The Rev. team has years worth of bug 
fixes to address before reworking the engine.
 Paul Looney

 -----Original Message-----
 From: J. Landman Gay <jacque at hyperactivesw.com>
 To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
 Sent: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:38:59 -0500
 Subject: Re: FORTH and Hypercard

 Stephen Barncard wrote: 
  
  > I also liked a feature of Hypercard that was like forth - you could 
 > redefine and intercept a lower level handler using the same name. I > 
guess it was a design decision to not allow that in Transcript.... but 
why? 
  
  Speed. Raney wouldn't put it in, and now that I'm used to it, I agree 
with his decision (though I argued with him about it at first.) In 
order to override a built-in token with a handler of the same name, all 
commands would have to pass through the message hierarchy. As it is 
now, they go directly to the engine which is one of the reasons that 
Rev is so fast. 
  
 -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com 
 HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com 
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