RPL second impressions (HP 28)

[Valentin Albillo]

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Hi, Pier:

(06-30-2018 11:16 AM)pier4r Wrote:  While I like RPL , I like it so much that I don't mind waiting 5-6 days for a result [...]

Good for you. Just out of curiosity: what's the result you're eagerly waiting 5-6 days for ? Would you indulge me and describe either the problem or the computation ? Thanks.

Quote:I mean, garbage can be written in whatever language if one wants to be cryptic.

The problem with RePeLent is that it's almost impossible to not write unfathomable "garbage" even if you're trying hard not to be cryptic, and in any case the moment you resort to stack juggling and stack acrobatics for the sake of efficiency you'll immediately plunge head on on cryptography.

Quote:Even basic without named variables, long routines and no comments can be hard to follow.

See ? you must picture a worst-case scenario (no named variables, long routines, no comments ...) to try and get "basic" to be "hard to follow" (nope!) while in even the best-case scenario RePeLent is nothing but impossibly hard to follow, to the point of needing to write down the stack after every step to understand what's where. Comparing both languages in this respect is utterly ridiculous.

Quote:[...] I find it way better to have a program that is slower but that can be extended and combined with other programs written in a similar way. This rather than a program that I have no will to touch because it is complicated to read and understand.

So you're advocating sacrificing speed for readability, i.e., completely going against what the RPL paradigm posits. Stack juggling is virtually incompatible with "readability".

You know what ? The RPL case reminds me a lot of a hobbyist personal computer of the 80's (I think), the Jupiter Ace, which had a native FORTH implementation out of the box and was being advertised as a fully structured, higher level, much faster language than Sinclair's Spectrum, so supposedly superior and/or more desirable.

You know how it all ended: almost nobody bought the FORTH computer, they only sold a few thousand units as nobody was writing commercial software for it and the BASIC listings in the popular hobbyist magazines of the time could'nt be used in FORTH. The makers were losing money big time and it ended in sheer failure despite its supposed strong points vs Spectrum's BASIC, which sold untold millions of units.

The Jupiter ACE's FORTH programming paradigm proved to be just too cryptic, it forced would-be programmers to take care of the low-level details (stacks, RPN evaluations, etc) which is precisely the kind of thing a decent language should take care of so that the programmer can concentrate on the algorithms and high-level details of the task to solve, not on "PICK3 ROT DUP SWAP ROT".

It's the programming language the one which should be working for me and releasing me of the low-level drudgery, not the other way around.

Best regards and have a nice weekend
V.
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