3 ms·

Forth is still alive and kicking!

capableweb 7y ago
Of course! Have friends who work with it on a daily basis. My comment was mostly tongue in cheek, didn't mean that Forth is completely dead. Usually when seeing Forth though, it's bit older stuff than say PHP. My friends for example, are stuck trying to refactor very old code, written in Forth. Didn't mean no harm :)
- macintux 7y ago
  What do your friends do with it? It’s very high on my priority list for new languages to learn, and finding a job with it someday would be very interesting.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    You might want to actually use it first before thinking you want to use it more. Forth is simple because it is primitive and passes the cognitive load on to you.
  - capableweb 7y ago
    One set work with maintaining old software for a national bank and the other set work with software for a huge international company that are not IT focused but ended up with software and firmware that just been ticking along since forever. I'm not jealous and don't think I would bear working like that every day for months. Take a hard look and try to build software with Forth before you try to use it professionally.
    - exikyut 7y ago
      There's a reasonable number of people out there who would be very interested in a disambiguation of scale, architecture, implementational wins/shortcomings, etc, about these two cases. Codebase size? Entropic/organizational complexity? Word style? Environment (custom/standard)? Standard(s) used? Ease of debugging? Testing methodology used? I most definitely am not literally asking for answers to this set of questions (considering the cases of a bank and an industry that presumably doesn't want to be known for its software) - I guess I'm just being exact in the gist of my curiosity :) The only interesting illustrative example I can provide is that Mattel once used Forth for its toys (quoting previous times I mentioned this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823216, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17755287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17755287) I don't know of any recent case studies.
  - carapace 7y ago
    Be sure to read "Thinking Forth". Even if you don't wind up doing a lot with Forth it will still improve your abilities as a programmer. http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
    - macintux 7y ago
      It's in my pile o' papers. I've broken it out a couple of times but haven't gotten far yet.
- bear8642 7y ago
  None taken - agree Forth's slightly older language.
DonHopkins 7y ago
FORTH ?KNOW IF HONK ELSE FORTH LEARN THEN

Of course! Have friends who work with it on a daily basis. My comment was mostly tongue in cheek, didn't mean that Forth is completely dead. Usually when seeing Forth though, it's bit older stuff than say PHP. My friends for example, are stuck trying to refactor very old code, written in Forth. Didn't mean no harm :)

macintux 7y ago
What do your friends do with it? It’s very high on my priority list for new languages to learn, and finding a job with it someday would be very interesting.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  You might want to actually use it first before thinking you want to use it more. Forth is simple because it is primitive and passes the cognitive load on to you.
- capableweb 7y ago
  One set work with maintaining old software for a national bank and the other set work with software for a huge international company that are not IT focused but ended up with software and firmware that just been ticking along since forever. I'm not jealous and don't think I would bear working like that every day for months. Take a hard look and try to build software with Forth before you try to use it professionally.
  - exikyut 7y ago
    There's a reasonable number of people out there who would be very interested in a disambiguation of scale, architecture, implementational wins/shortcomings, etc, about these two cases. Codebase size? Entropic/organizational complexity? Word style? Environment (custom/standard)? Standard(s) used? Ease of debugging? Testing methodology used? I most definitely am not literally asking for answers to this set of questions (considering the cases of a bank and an industry that presumably doesn't want to be known for its software) - I guess I'm just being exact in the gist of my curiosity :) The only interesting illustrative example I can provide is that Mattel once used Forth for its toys (quoting previous times I mentioned this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823216, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17755287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17755287) I don't know of any recent case studies.
- carapace 7y ago
  Be sure to read "Thinking Forth". Even if you don't wind up doing a lot with Forth it will still improve your abilities as a programmer. http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
  - macintux 7y ago
    It's in my pile o' papers. I've broken it out a couple of times but haven't gotten far yet.
bear8642 7y ago
None taken - agree Forth's slightly older language.

DonHopkins 7y ago

FORTH ?KNOW IF HONK ELSE FORTH LEARN THEN