Ironically, though, Java is often compiled to a stack-based virtual machine. "A number of instructions are provided for the direct manipulation of the operand s

Ironically, though, Java is often compiled to a stack-based virtual machine. "A number of instructions are provided for the direct manipulation of the operand stack: pop, pop2, dup, dup2, dup_x1, dup2_x1, dup_x2, dup2_x2, swap." (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jvms/second_edition/html/Overview.doc.html#16561 http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jvms/second_edition/html/Over...) CPython uses stack-based bytecode, too (http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/lib/bytecodes.html http://docs.python.org/release/2.5.2/lib/bytecodes.html - POP_TOP, ROT_THREE, etc.), and Lua's C API also uses a stack interface (though its VM is register-based now). Those stack manipulations still creep in, they're just not written by hand anymore. It makes more sense to me to think of Forth as a kind of virtual machine. Writing its bytecode by hand seems like a bad trade-off, except in an extremely limited environment.