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I thought after yesterday's Prolog post went down quite well I'd try introducing those of HN who haven't experienced it to Forth, a stack-based language that I
by iuguy 16y ago
I thought after yesterday's Prolog post went down quite well I'd try introducing those of HN who haven't experienced it to Forth, a stack-based language that I loved as a child for it's extensibility (given at the time my alternative was BASIC or Z80 ASM I hope you'd understand). Older Mac users might not know this but your Open Boot firmware contains a fairly reasonable Forth interpreter built in.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy Forth as much as I did.
EDIT: Brain fart, wrote stackless when I meant to write stack based, sorry.
- mtm 16y agoI love Forth but it's anything but 'stackless'. In fact, it's probably one of the most stack intensive languages to ever exist (and one of the funnest, especially when used for embedded systems work). 'Starting Forth' is indeed a treasure, I think I'll dig out my old copy and add it to the stack, heh.
- iuguy 16y agoThanks for pointing out my brainfart, I've edited it. As a thankyou, here's the Forth I used as a kid: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0008178 http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0008178 ISTR it was a FIG-Forth implementation, but I haven't used it in over 20 years (wow, that feels old) so I might be wrong.
- mtm 16y agoNo sweat. I remember using Apple Forth (from Cap'n Software) in 1982 in Independent Study in high school. I made a cloud chamber simulator with it for the Physics department. (Side note: my public high school had an awesome science department: a radiation class complete with scintillation counters, a cobalt source in a lead pig, etc. PDP-11 and Apple IIs, small radio telescope on the roof. Riverview High School, Sarasota, FL; no idea what it's like these days.)
- iuguy 16y agoWow, I spent two years looking after a PDP 11/23 running RTS/E. Interesting times... In that I've never met anyone less than 20 years older that understands what I've done (and to be fair most of those older than that have an aamazing understanding compared to me), I found it amazing that between the PDP and AS/400 box at work that they were bought by people that retired a long time ago and still ran, not that the data coming out was accurate. I think the rest of my employer's place was like that, and perhaps that was part of the problem.
- kenjackson 16y agoI always wanted to learn Forth, as there was a Forth compiler available on the Commodore Vic-20. Thanks for the reminder and the link. :-)
- iuguy 16y agoIt wasn't this by any chance? http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/vic20/roms/tools/8k/Vic%20Forth%201.10.prg http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/vic20/roms/tools/8k/V... You should be able to load this into VICE (http://www.viceteam.org/ http://www.viceteam.org/) and start hacking away. Hope this helps.
- kenjackson 16y agoHonestly, I don't remember. I never used it. I just used to see it in Compute! magazine. But this looks cool. Never had seen VICE before either.
- zandorg 16y agoI got an Oxford Computer Publishing FORTH compiler for my Commodore 64. A great language, though I only tried to write a text adventure in it!
- colomon 16y agoI wrote a SID music sequencing program in Forth on my C64, it was a tremendously fun programming environment. (I think there may have been a bit of assembler involved as well, as it was very easy to call from Forth.)