On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 4:18 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 01/19/2017 04:17 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:
sites
around the USA for MCI. It was used for about 15 year. ('85-'00).
Quick trivia question. Why was it named FORTH, not FOURTH?
A five-letter filename limitation, if memory serves.
Brrrr, brings back bad assembler memories (5 char limit) ....
Yeah, that's one part of history that I do NOT miss. I do a good bit of assembler these days and just wouldn't be able to stay sane with five-character identifier names.
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Yep. :)
well, you can wonder how he chose to remove the 'U' instead of some other character Could there be some significance behind removing the 3rd letter Since this was supposed to be the 4th generation, maybe he wanted to symbolize the advancement over the 3rd generation, by removing the 3rd letter, or.... was it really to make it a succinct word already found in the dictionary, such as FORTH this industry was already know for making unique conjunctions of letters to make a title, regardless if it was an acroynym or not why could he have not made it, FURTH, to make it stand above the crowd, FURTH, "what's that, cool another programming language" which removes the 2nd letter, but maybe that option didn't have any significance I mean look at the name PERL after all who knows....