The fifth development environment

Abstract

Although an excellent programming system in its own right, Forth does not provide an adequate platform for the development and maintenance of large, multi-programmer projects. Fifth is a derivative of Forth with 32-bit arithmetic, heap memory management, a large memory model, automatic pointer validity checking, and a Smalltalk-like browser interface. Using Fifth, a programmer can view and edit a program’s structure directly using the dictionary browser, and at the character/line level using the text editor. Introduction compiler piggybacked to a mediocre editor. However, in the Xerox SmallAlthough Forth is an excellent talk-80 system we found our model. language for quickly developing The most distinguishing aspects of software, its power is often sadly the Smalltalk development environsaddled with a bare-bones development (besides the window/m ousi ment environment. In 1984 we ness) are: began to develop a language envi, ronment that would support the development and maintenance of large software systems. As we developed Fifth we placed an emphasis on the environment since in our experience the environment often makes a larger difference in productivity than the language. . Unfortunately, most development environments in the PC world seem to be clones of mid-70’s UNIX systems. And the Turbo Pascal system is little more than a fast Code Browser. This allows the programmer to inspect and edit his program at the module level, without the “noise” of the actual source