15 ms·

Collapse OS – Why Forth?

281 points by crousto 6y ago

RandomGuyDTB 6y ago
It's odd to highlight that Forth is 50 years old, considering C is 48 years old and still in very heavy use in operating systems development.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Perhaps Forth has changed less than C in that time. The C of 48 years ago can look quite different from modern C.
  - RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
    There has never been one Forth. In a world with N Forth programmers, one can expect roughly N implementations of Forth. Perhaps closer to 2*N. An ANS spec exists, but most Forth programmers would say it misses the point. Forth is a collection of ideas and philosophies toward programming as much as it is a language. Two stacks and a dictionary. Threaded code (direct, indirect, token, subroutine, etc...). Collapsed abstractions. No sealed black boxes. Tight factoring. C has changed. Forth is everchanging.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      There has been OpenFirmware.
    - boothby 6y ago
      Well, shit... I've been a lil frustrated by a lack of a clear resource and consequentially haven't gotten far on a couple half-hearted attempts to learn it. I can just make it up myself? A little late in the weekend for a new project, but I'm suddenly interested again.
    - throwaway17_17 6y ago
      This is a slightly off topic question for you, do you think the attributes you named are required for having a “Forth” or are they just the most common implementation characteristics? My current pet language project certainly looks Forth-like, with different semantics and a modal dependent type system, but is not threaded nor does it have the traditional stacks and dictionary. I don’t know if I’d call it a Forth, but maybe it is?
      - RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
        "The dictionary" can be implemented in many ways; simple or clever, namespaced or not. A language without any form of local or global name binding would presumably need quotations ala Joy/Factor, which means your stacks probably have to store objects rather than raw numbers. This tips the scale in the direction of a higher-level language. The stacks are likewise a description of semantics rather than implementation. Some Forths keep the top few stack elements in registers to reduce overhead. If the return stack isn't user-accessible (r> >r etc.) then, again, you're straying closer to a higher-level functional language than a Forth. There are many kinds of threaded code. For example, subroutine-threaded code uses native subroutine call instructions in word bodies and does away with the inner interpreter. Threaded code is a natural consequence of disentangling conventional "activation records" into two stacks which grow and shrink independently. You could have a Forth without threaded code, I suppose. Some Forths attempt to "seal off" or otherwise obscure some parts of their own internal workings from "user programs". This is more common among dialects which try to adhere to ANS specs, like GForth. This isn't a total anathema to Forthiness, but it tends to introduce additional complexity. If a word is useful for implementing a forth kernel, why couldn't it be useful in implementing other functionality, too? If you're building something higher-level which vaguely resembles Forth, it's probably better to describe it as a concatenative language. A dependent type system doesn't sound very Forthy, imo.
        lebuffon 6y ago
        "You could have a Forth without threaded code, I suppose." VFX Forth from MPE UK is a native code generator. It evaluates source code and emits inline code or calls depending what you tell the compiler to do. It can expand everything to inline if you tell it but your code would get much bigger. This is the state of the art for Forth compilers today. Homemade systems and older systems use threaded code. I have no affiliation with MPE.
  - moonchild 6y ago
    Not really. Function definitions look different, and we can declare variables in the middle of function bodies, but those are surface-level changes. The language itself hasn't changed appreciably.
- downerending 6y ago
  I suspect that a lot of readers have no idea how old it is. (I, on the other hand, have to be reminded that 50 years have passed.)
- crousto 6y ago
  Collapse OS was initially written in assembly for the Z80, a microprocessor first launched in 1976. The fact that Forth is 6 years older than the Z80 seems interesting enough of a step further back in time to be hightlighted.
- lstodd 6y ago
  It's odd to compare C and Forth. They are so different. Edit: as someone below mentioned there can not be a 'Standard Forth'. You just write your own one as you see fit.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    There's ANS Forth. Chuck Moore doesn't like it, but it exists.
- moonchild 6y ago
  Not to mention lisp, in which HN is written.
RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
I'm delighted to see that hsoft took suggestions about Forth to heart, and that it has lead to both simplification and enrichment of the project.
monadic2 6y ago
Is the focus on forth to rapidly bootstrap from more than just z80, or for readability, or for some other concern?
- messe 6y ago
  Not the developer, just a forth enthusiast. But I'd imagine it's the ability to rapidly bootstrap on other architectures. Readability is just a bonus on top of that. The focus of CollapseOS is, well, an OS that can be used after society has collapsed, something running on scavenged chips on hand-soldered boards (in the worst case scenario). The original logic was the Z80 is still pretty prevalent, so it was thought to be a good choice to base the OS on. Turns out that a Forth interpreter/compiler is incredibly easy to write (just a few hundred bytes of a assembler, a few thousand at the upper end), so by using Forth they hugely expand the range of scavengeable chips.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
I hate this headline but the project is very cool. People like me who were ignorant should start here instead of the Github to get a better sense of the design goals (and why they are using Forth): https://collapseos.org/forth.html https://collapseos.org/forth.html
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, we'll change the url to that from https://github.com/hsoft/collapseos/commit/d777a74be30cefc1f097ef2f3b6bba7bde63e44a https://github.com/hsoft/collapseos/commit/d777a74be30cefc1f.... Thanks! (Submitted title was "Collapse OS was entirely rewritten in Forth, a 50 year old language".) The project itself was discussed last year at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628.
  - weare138 6y ago
    I think that's a better headline personally...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I've read that page and I'm still wondering why they're using FORTH. C has excellent portability and performance. The article agrees with the general consensus that C is also generally a better language for the programmer. So why use FORTH? What does it matter that it can do cute things with self-hosting? What does 'compactness' matter? If the goal is to build a portable means of writing programs for Z80 and AVR, why not develop a C-like language, or an IR, or put work into developing a serious optimising C compiler targeting the Z80? I get the impression that's a relatively unexplored area for (rather niche) compiler research.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    The rest of the storyline of this page covers what I think is the core concept that Chuck Moore started from, and defines Forth as its own environment: the core of the language that needs to be defined in order to write and execute Forth words is surprisingly small. Once you have the core words in place, you can layer on exactly the constructs you need. I won't claim to be a proficient Forth author, but I've used it to accomplish a couple of rather odd one-off projects, and it is amazing how much you can do, as long as you're not expecting graphics or networking or huge storage needs. Compactness matters because when you're trying to bootstrap into a tiny (or hacked together custom build) environment, the tiny bootstrap footprint means you can be up and rolling that much faster. C is all good, I've been writing it for a long time, but I'd much rather get a Forth core going in raw assembly than even a stripped down to brass tacks C compiler.
messe 6y ago
Nice. Must revisit my own Forth OS, or maybe just start contributing to this.
bsaul 6y ago
First time i hear about this project and i love it. I often talk with a friend who's an historian, and that makes me realize how our relationship with time, as an industry, is extremely short sighted. The internet archive is an immensely valuable project, as well as all the websites archiving old documentation, etc. But i don't think a lot of people realize the value of things they're destroying everytime they execute a delete statement in a DB or a filesystem. This Collapse OS ambition to be able to "bootstrap" something useful over any kind of primitive hardware and sustain the passage of time ( or catastrophic event) may have an immense value in the future.
- onetom 6y ago
  DELETE statement... That's far too obvious. With every UPDATE statement you are forgetting the past, yet it's still the goto DB paradigm! It's okay to constantly lose information apparently... And it's not like we don't have alternatives. There is Datomic of course, but also juxt/crux and DataHike.
dang 6y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 from last year.
tarkin2 6y ago
I love this project. Thank you for posting it. The idea of a post collapse operating system reminds me of slackware/subgenius’s old slogan: “...the world ends tomorrow and you may die!” I’ll be trying to compile collapseos, write forth and load slackware on floppys in a few years then. (Will systemd survive civilisation’s collapse, especially when it caused it, that is the question....)
- mhd 6y ago
  For me this is slightly into Poe's Law territory: Is this actual prepper mindset, or tongue-in-cheek?
  - tarkin2 6y ago
    Thanks. I'd never heard of that law before. I think he's serious. I'll appreciate his work both pre and pos civilisation collapse. I like his software aesthetic too. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm seeking more control, maybe the world has come needlessly complex, but there's a certain appeal about returning to more manageable days, where it was possible to fit a software and hardware system in your brain, and your brain was swimming with ideas on how to use a limited system rather than drowning in layers of complexity.
    - mhd 6y ago
      I liked playing the Fallout games, I grew up with 8 bit machines, so I'm all in at using a post-apocalyptic scenario as a setup for a though experiment tech stack. In a "ha ha only serious" manner. But on the other hand, real preppers scare the effing s out out of me.
undershirt 6y ago
> Forth doesn't elegantly describe complex algorithms… However, this mental pain does makes you question your need for complexity… This is something that I think few developers are familiar with and is hard to describe with words. It needs to be experienced. Nice framing, that it’s not an intellectual argument you can make to justify the benefits of drawbacks (i.e. an infamous red flag of stockholm syndrome), so you have to point to the experience of the thing itself (“you had to be there”).
- hxegon 6y ago
  Or there are experiences which have hard to describe intangible qualities that are hard to put logically. Not sure why you have to reach for stockholm syndrome here.
  - undershirt 6y ago
    my comment was way off the mark, didn’t realized it sounded sarcastic. i was instead trying to appreciate his approach to the intangible—pointing to direct experience to avoid stockholm criticism.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  I'll agree with the article's author - there is a quality to a Forth-style solution that just doesn't compare to other languages' styles or overall structure. When I first heard of Forth and started trying out some of my own code, I was surprised by the initial effort it took me to adjust to writing small words vs C style functions. I then started building on the pieces I first wrote, and it took very little code to cover my needs. So yes, there's a very different experience, and it does take adjustment for anyone only familiar with function-style code. And it is not just what I've described, there's a whole different thought pattern involved.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html "That being said, I don't consider it unreasonable to not believe that collapse is likely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs." Triple negative? Quadruple negative? (If we count the second "don't".) Compare something like: "I consider it reasonable to believe that collapse is unlikely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs." It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  >It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author. That seems like a perfectly valid thing for grammatical structure to do, although this one tripped me up admittedly.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  There's a difference between “not unreasonable” and “reasonable”.
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    Can you provide more details?
    - stan_rogers 6y ago
      It's the difference between "not crazy" (ie, "you don't agree with me, and that's okay") and "sane" (ie, "I'm wrong here").
    - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
      There's a difference between "x is not negative" and "x is positive" (¬(x < 0) ⇏ (x > 0)). Why shouldn't a similar subtlety (or a larger one) exist in prosaic language?
      - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
jstanley 6y ago
If this gets you interested in z80 hardware, I would recommend building an RC2014: https://rc2014.co.uk/ https://rc2014.co.uk/ I built an RC2014 after CollapseOS was posted last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I ended up adding a front panel, complete with switches and lights, to allow toggling in and executing code without a ROM, and also wrote a HTTP/1.0 server for CP/M (which was an enormous headache for lots of different reasons). Never did get around to running CollapseOS on it though.
- mdbauman 6y ago
  I love this project, and check in on it every few months. I particularly like the idea of scavenging hardware: > With a copy of this project, a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install Collapse OS without external resources (i.e. internet) on a machine of her design, built from scavenged parts with low-tech tools. I'd be interested in trying to build my own proof-of-concept, but my hardware experience pretty much starts and stops with kids' electronics kits from 20 years ago. Assuming I can scavenge a Z80, what would be a logical next step? What books/other resources should I be reading to learn more?
  - KajMagnus 6y ago
    > > a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install > trying to build What if there was a crowdfunding project to pay different people, to actually do this? They could find unclear things in the docs, or missing docs. Usability Testing, sort of, of Collapse OS? This is maybe pretty important after all :- ) More important than Fly-to-Mars rockets?
  - jstanley 6y ago
    Definitely read (at least the first chapters of) the Z80 cpu manual: http://z80.info/zip/z80cpu_um.pdf http://z80.info/zip/z80cpu_um.pdf It gets a bit dry when it gets to the bit that documents the individual instructions, but the overview before that point is well worth reading. Once you've done that and you're trying to write code, this page is a good reference for the instructions: http://clrhome.org/table/ http://clrhome.org/table/ To build a scavenged machine, you'll need a Z80 CPU, a clock source (I think an RC oscillator would be the simplest working setup?), probably some sort of ROM, an SRAM, some sort of IO device (probably a Z80 SIO/2 for serial), and a 5V power supply. I think that should be all that is required. Then you need to load your code into the ROM at address 0. Then you can connect the SIO to a USB serial cable (e.g. FTDI) and communicate with your Z80 using a modern PC. I can't remember if the SIO/2 needs external address decoding logic, maybe you could cope without it if you are happy for it to use up every address? But building an RC2014 would be easier and more likely to result in a working machine, and would give you almost all the knowledge required to build a scavenged one later if you still want to.
mshockwave 6y ago
this might be a dumb question but can someone briefly explain why Forth is more suitable over C or other languages in general on post-apocalyptic OS?
- gridlockd 6y ago
  It is very small.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  - It's tiny and dead simple to implement - It sits very close to assembly - It allows high-level programming like in C - The concept of pushing/popping things onto/off the stack is a relatively straightforward programming model when done consistently One of the old competitors to the likes of UEFI and uBoot is OpenFirmware (also known as OpenBoot), for which the primary UI is a Forth shell; OpenFirmware was the BIOS equivalent for Sun's SPARC workstations/servers (and still is for Oracle's/Fujistu's SPARC servers, last I checked) and most POWER hardware (including "New World" PowerPC Macs), among others. About the most delightful pre-boot environment I've used; it's a shame it didn't catch on in the x86 or ARM space.
  - fouc 6y ago
    Also works great with graphics. PostScript is similar to Forth.
    - yesenadam 6y ago
      I got into Forth recently - using Gnu Forth - but got bogged down at my inability to do graphics. There are hardly any Forth programming videos of any kind online, besides the "101" kind, but I found one by a guy who managed to get graphics/windows going, I think with GForth. (Can't find it on youtube now.) Looked mega-complicated. So lately back into Tcl/Tk, which also satisfies my "bizarre, powerful and very cool language" itch but actually makes graphics/windows super-easy. I do think Forth is awesome though! After getting into Forth I got into PostScript, which does have most of the Forth fun/freedom taken out of it. It's not usable for GUI-type programming is it?
krick 6y ago
I thought this is pretty fun project and the idea is just cool right away, but then I went on reading and was surprised by the fact it seems the author is serious. I would be really curious to hear his opinion on why the supply chains should collapse before 2030. Obviously, there wouldn't be a shortage of people in the comments who can start speculating on why it might happen, and, of course, I myself also can provide a couple of feasible scenarios, but nobody of us were serious enough to actually start this project, so his opinion on the matter is somehow quite more interesting to me than it would normally be.
- slim 6y ago
  he gives a book name "Comment tout peut s'effondrer" by Pablo Servigne, Éditions du Seuil, 2015 https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    There's apparently an English translation released very recently: "How everything can collapse: A manual for our times." I haven't read either version, but piecing together the thesis from reviews, it seems to be a somewhat more evolved form of Malthusian catastrophe and Peak Oil(/Energy), with a dash of climate change alarmism [1] and Piketty-style concern over inequality. And technology won't save us because... well, I haven't found anyone who can elucidate that concern. It seems to me that the commenter who wrote "this book seems to be only for those who were convinced beforehand" has it right. [1] I don't like using "alarmism" here because it suggests that I don't think it's a problem (I do), but I can't think of a better succinct description of "if we don't fix this literally tomorrow, we're totally screwed."
    - lmohseni 6y ago
      > technology won’t save us because... I hope I’m not uncharitably interpreting your comment, but are you saying that technology will be some sort of panacea?
      - 6y ago
bitwize 6y ago
This is the kind of malarkey I'd get up to on a personal project of mine. Like, I wonder if I'd get farther if I'd written it in Forth/TinyScheme/Erlang? May as well completely overhaul it and find out!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mlang23 6y ago
Forth is one of the last languages on my list. Whenever I read something like this article, I want to learn it. The advice at the end of the article seems interesting. Does anyone have any resources that might help with this?
- japanoise 6y ago
  A Forth shibboleth is that you have to implement your own in order to understand it. Try reading the assembly, then forth source, for jonesforth: https://github.com/AlexandreAbreu/jonesforth https://github.com/AlexandreAbreu/jonesforth This is how I learned.
  - mlang23 6y ago
    Oh wow, thanks. That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
    - gmfawcett 6y ago
      Original repository and introductory article: http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=shortlog http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=shortlog https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jonesforth-git-repository/ https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jonesforth-git-reposit...
      - mlang23 6y ago
        For anyone stumbling over this and having trouble to build it, I had to figure out two things: 1. When building on x86_64 Debian, I had to install linux-libc-dev:i386 to get /usr/include/i386-linux-gnu/asm/unistd.h. I also had to adapt the include path to have it actually found. 2. If you see a segfault when running the executable, you likely need to remove -Wl,-Ttext,0 from the build command. At least on my system, it fixes the segfaults and now jonesforth runs as expected.
haolez 6y ago
> Some Forth enthusiasts like the language for itself. They think that its easier to express much of the logic of a program in this language. Many books and tutorials are touting this. [...] That's not my opinion. In my opinion, it's not that FORTH code is hard to read, but that FORTH gives the programmer so much freedom that every program becomes its own microcosm of DSLs.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  : C(-; LICK SMILE NOSE WINK ; ( See my profile for more microcosmic FORTH DSLs! ) c(-; https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins
Koshkin 6y ago
CollapseOS? Meh. What we need is ApocalypsOS. Something to play Tetris on after having hauled a bucket of wellwater (and some wood) to the 23-rd floor apartment where I try to survive.
megameter 6y ago
If I had to put my finger on why Forth is hard for most programmers, it's like this: the structured program theorem suggests using sequence, selection, and iteration to control program logic. Assembly code on hardware architectures will assign all meaning sequence-relative, late-binding the selection and iteration. Forth doubles down on this sequence-first approach through a more versatile assignment mode(the stack) while only minimally accommodating the other two. That makes it easy to implement, while not explicitly addressing expressability. Forth written "flat" with shallow data stack usage is assembly by another name, a wrapper for load-and-store; Forth that does everything with intricate stack manipulation is a source of endless puzzles since it quickly goes write-only. But, like any good language with meta expression capabilities, you can work your way up towards complex constructs in Forth, and write words that enforce whatever conceptual boundaries are needed and thus check your work and use the system as a compiler. That's what breaks Forth away from being a simple macro-assembler. But you have to write it in that direction, and design the system that makes sense for the task from the very beginning. That falls into an unacceptable trade-off really easily in our current world, where the majority of developers are relatively inexperienced consumers of innumerable dependencies.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  Interesting perspective. For anyone else who wasn't familiar with this usage of "selection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_program_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_program_theorem
- monadic2 6y ago
  > But, like any good language with meta expression capabilities, you can work your way up towards complex constructs in Forth, and write words that enforce whatever conceptual boundaries are needed and thus check your work and use the system as a compiler. That's what breaks Forth away from being a simple macro-assembler. But you have to write it in that direction, and design the system that makes sense for the task from the very beginning. That falls into an unacceptable trade-off really easily in our current world, where the majority of developers are relatively inexperienced consumers of innumerable dependencies. Well expressed, I often think of the stack as the syntax of the language, not the runtime implementation, and it is quite difficult to hire for this skill without spending a lot of money.
fouc 6y ago
I keep hoping that a Rubyist will someday do the same thing for Forth like José Valim did for Erlang, with Elixir.
imode 6y ago
If the author wants their code to survive the apocalypse, they should generate Turing Machines that have a simple shim interpreter for low-power architectures. The benefit of this is you can build an interpreter for a TM in wood or other simple materials. Semi-Thue systems also fit.
- imode 6y ago
  I don't get why this is downvoted.
  - carapace 6y ago
    Me neither. I like it but the limiting factor on post-apocalyptic digital electronics will be access to datasheets, eh? It would be interesting to build a minimal useful CPU out of fluidics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics
    - imode 6y ago
      Definitely. Or mechanical logic gates. But the surface area would very quickly become an issue for such a project, and you'd need to assume only a certain few tools.
      - carapace 6y ago
        True. I wonder what kind of computations people would need to do that would make it worthwhile to make big, slow computers? I bet it would be easier to make up "sacred dances" that incorporated processing in the motions of the dancers. And let's not forget that a human with an abacus can do a great deal of the math required for everyday life. :-)
zentiggr 6y ago
I think I've had my own moment of clarity that spans both Forth(s) and Lisp(s) and explains why neither is as common as other languages. In most common languages, there is a complicated base spec that covers many cases and defines a broad range of affordances, plus libraries and libraries that expand on an already fleshed out collection of tools and etc. Forths and Lisps give you the core of an environment, and let/expect you to build on the foundation to create your own implementation. Like someone else in this thread said, N programmers, N dialects. Or, more accurately, every Forth program is its own DSL for accomplishing its work.
- sahil-kang 6y ago
  I think you can draw this ‘core of an environment’ parallel between Forth and Scheme: both are small languages and they emphasize growing the language to the problem domain [1]. Common Lisp, on the other hand, is a large language: implementations provide much more than a foundational core, and a fairly comprehensive list of libraries exists. I think RPG’s Worse Is Better highlights some of the reasons why CL isn’t as popular as other languages [2]. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 [2] https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html
  - pkage 6y ago
    Off topic, but this (from RPG's Worse is Better) sounds very familiar: > Part of the problem stems from our very dear friends in the artificial intelligence (AI) business. AI has a number of good approaches to formalizing human knowledge and problem solving behavior. However, AI does not provide a panacea in any area of its applicability. Some early promoters of AI to the commercial world raised expectation levels too high. These expectations had to do with the effectiveness and deliverability of expert-system-based applications.
- c2the3rd 6y ago
  Why not say "Every ~~Forth~~ program is its own DSL for accomplishing its work."? For moderately complicated programs in any language you choose, it can take a long time to grok how the literal code relates to solving the conceptual problem. No language can build in every abstraction, and no programmer has time to learn them all. I think you are close to part of an answer, but it isn't because Forth and Lisp expect one to do more work than other languages. If anything, they expect one to do less. The problem is programmers feel lost because there is no way to differentiate the bedrock of the language from higher abstractions. C has operators and statements and keywords that tell you there is nothing "underneath" what you are looking at. With Forth, everything is words. With Lisp, everything is lists.
jvanderbot 6y ago
I feel sheepish for being on that thread as a detractor, after reading this post.
johnisgood 6y ago
Why not Factor? :P
- TurboHaskal 6y ago
  Because Forth is more (less?) than a Smalltalk on RPN.
garmaine 6y ago
Forth is Lisp, but with composition as the basic operator instead of application. The result, of course, is a wildly different language but one which inspired the same degree of fanaticism among its adherents in their search for simplicity and elegance. A truly under appreciated language imho.
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  I rather disagree with your first sentence. Forth is not Lisp, nor is Prolog or APL Lisp, and none of these languages are one short conceptual leap away from the others. Even a very rudimentary Forth can express concepts which have only hazy correspondences in a Lisp, like words which twiddle the return stack or yield a variable number of results on the parameter stack. I find it misleading at best to casually intimate that Lisp is some kind of ur-language which exemplifies simplicity and thus lies at the root of any design space. Fans of Lisp are overly eager to stake claim upon ideas which do not belong to their language. I don't mean to bite your head off about it; this is just a trope I find tremendously frustrating.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    The core of Lisp is a small set of rules about abstraction and application using lists. Forth, at its core, can be formalized with the exact same set of rules (one to one correspondence) but with stacks and composition as the operator. The languages are very VERY different, but there is a similar bare bone formal framework at the bottom.
    - maxsun 6y ago
      I'm very new to Forth, but find this intuition really appealing; do you know of any examples that demonstrate/prove this correspondence?
      - garmaine 6y ago
        It’s only the newer “concatenative” languages that have explored this forms correspondence. See this essay by Jon Purdy (author of Kitten) on “why concatenative languages matter”: http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenative-programming-matters.html?m=1 http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenativ...
dreamcompiler 6y ago
There seems to be a common conception that Forth is always interpreted by some kind of virtual machine. But it's quite possible to compile Forth all the way down to native machine instructions with no loss of interactivity and without losing the rapid bootstrap capability the author describes. Such a Forth runs almost as fast as C (almost because modern out-of-order and other processor optimizations probably don't work well on compiled Forth code). I used this approach when I bootstrapped a Forth compiler on the TI 34010 graphics chip in a similar fashion as the author. It even had local variables so you didn't drive yourself mad thinking about the stack all the time. My favorite commercial example of such a Forth was Mach 2 Forth on the early (pre-OSX) Macs. I don't know if any modern Forths do down-to-the-metal compiling or local variables, but I'd be interested to find out.
- ehaliewicz2 6y ago
  > local variables I believe most modern forths will have these, gnuforth does for example. > down-to-the-metal compiling I think there are some that do this, but back in the day, the opinion of lots of forth programmers was that threaded code was good for the 90% of the program where performance didn't matter, and added an inline assembler for areas where it did.
  - Someone 6y ago
    And of course, you can always add support for local variables yourself. For an example, see http://turboforth.net/resources/locals.html http://turboforth.net/resources/locals.html, which takes 808 bytes to implement. That’s hefty, for some systems where one would use Forth, but, FTA, “Placing key values in locals will actually both increase peformance, and make your code smaller”, so you can earn that back if you use the facility enough)
redisman 6y ago
Love this project. I wonder why not make it run on smartphones? I'd imagine that's the vast majority of computers out there today. Easier to find a working smartphone than retro consoles.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Usually it's nontrivial to get anything custom to run on a smartphone, they're pretty locked down like that compared to more general hardware.
- eloisius 6y ago
  He explained that a bit here[1]. The project targets a world wherein existing computers have degraded to a point beyond repair and we have to scavenge parts that can be retrofitted. His reasoning is that under such conditions, parts that can be thru-hole soldered such as 8-bit z80 CPUs will be much more robust than surface mounted ARM chips. 1: https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Here is a Forth you can use on Linux and Windows http://web.archive.org/web/20080828064920/http://ronware.org/reva/wiki/stable http://web.archive.org/web/20080828064920/http://ronware.org...
TheUndead96 6y ago
The weird thing about history is that it only makes sense backwards. Someone 500 years in the future might think of this as the Gutenberg printing press. It is often difficult to appreciate the magnitude of actions in the present.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Why should they think that? The gutenberg press was used in the real world. There are lots of OS being used in the real world for real work. So why should someone in 500 years think this is more relevant, than for example Linux? And if there is a real collapse, then I also do not really believe everyone makes a run for collapseOS. There are other options: all the ones, tinkerers and hackers use already today.
  - TheUndead96 6y ago
    We don't know how history will pan out. Just wanted to share the weird feeling I sometimes have about current events. For all we know, post-collapse technology could be based off QMX reverse-engineered from luxury vehicles. It's just fun to think about how events can have that unexpected butterfly effect. I sometimes catch myself with the implicit belief that we are "late" in the story of history. But given the possible expanse of time, we might be the "hunter-gatherers" of a civilization we cannot even begin to comprehend. This might just be the second of the dark ages.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
jbb67 6y ago
I want to learn forth now. Where can I find a modern usable forth that works well on windows to make real programs? Does such a thing even exist?
- TurboHaskal 6y ago
  You can do just fine with the free versions of SwiftForth and VFX Forth as long as you don't mind that they are 32bit only. If you end up liking it and want 64bit, you can buy iForth for 100 EUR. It's what I use. These are all amazing optimizing compilers. If you care about OSS: Don't waste your time with GForth. If you want something simple that you can hack yourself, take a look at pforth.
  - anthk 6y ago
    This. Pforth works really well and the ".S" word is straightforward, while pfe is not. GForth is too difficult; altough you can code for the Game Boy with it, but in order to learn, pforth is more than enough.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
On the topic of compactness: is FORTH ever used in the demoscene? As I understand it, they tend to write assembly, and compress the resulting machine code, for decompression at runtime.
Narishma 6y ago
> The Z80 asm version of Collapse OS self-hosts on a RC2014 with a 5K shell on ROM, a 5K assembler binary loaded in RAM from SD card (but that could be in ROM, that's why I count it as ROM in my project's feature highlights) and 8K of RAM. That is, it can assemble itself from source within those resources. Meanwhile, you can't compile rustc on a 32-bit system because it runs out of address space...
detaro 6y ago
somewhat OT, but are there any active Forth communities/forums to follow if one wants to see what people get up to with it?
tibbydudeza 6y ago
And all I wanted was a pipboy.
onetom 6y ago
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned https://flashforth.com/ https://flashforth.com/ There is no intriguing backstory for it, like for CollapseOS, but it's a ~6 kiloword, practical 4th environment for Microchip PIC microcontrollers, which are a lot simpler than Z80, btw... The source code is trivial to understand too. My father is still using it daily to replace/substitute Caterpillar machine electronics or build custom instruments for biological research projects. We started with Mary(Forth) back then, when the first, very constrained PIC models came out, with 8 deep stack and ~200 bytes of RAM. Later we used the https://rfc1149.net/devel/picforth.html https://rfc1149.net/devel/picforth.html compiler for those, which doesn't provide an interactive environment. I made a MIDI "flute" with that for example, which was fabricated from sawing out a row of keys from a keyboard and used a pen house as a blow pipe and a bent razor with a photo-gate as the blow-pressure detector... There are more minimal Forth OSes, which might be more accessible than a Z80-based one. I would think those are more convenient for learning, how can you have video, keyboard and disk IO, an interactive REPL and compiler in less than 10KB I remember, I played a lot with https://wiki.c2.com/?EnthForth https://wiki.c2.com/?EnthForth But if you really want to see something mind-bending, then you should study Moore's ColorForth! I found it completely unusable, BUT I've learnt immense amount of stuff from it: https://colorforth.github.io/ https://colorforth.github.io/ There are more usable variants of it, btw. Also worth looking into Low Fat computing: http://www.ultratechnology.com/lowfat.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/lowfat.htm I think it's still relevant today.

281 points by crousto 6y ago

It's odd to highlight that Forth is 50 years old, considering C is 48 years old and still in very heavy use in operating systems development.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Perhaps Forth has changed less than C in that time. The C of 48 years ago can look quite different from modern C.
- RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
  There has never been one Forth. In a world with N Forth programmers, one can expect roughly N implementations of Forth. Perhaps closer to 2*N. An ANS spec exists, but most Forth programmers would say it misses the point. Forth is a collection of ideas and philosophies toward programming as much as it is a language. Two stacks and a dictionary. Threaded code (direct, indirect, token, subroutine, etc...). Collapsed abstractions. No sealed black boxes. Tight factoring. C has changed. Forth is everchanging.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    There has been OpenFirmware.
  - boothby 6y ago
    Well, shit... I've been a lil frustrated by a lack of a clear resource and consequentially haven't gotten far on a couple half-hearted attempts to learn it. I can just make it up myself? A little late in the weekend for a new project, but I'm suddenly interested again.
  - throwaway17_17 6y ago
    This is a slightly off topic question for you, do you think the attributes you named are required for having a “Forth” or are they just the most common implementation characteristics? My current pet language project certainly looks Forth-like, with different semantics and a modal dependent type system, but is not threaded nor does it have the traditional stacks and dictionary. I don’t know if I’d call it a Forth, but maybe it is?
    - RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
      "The dictionary" can be implemented in many ways; simple or clever, namespaced or not. A language without any form of local or global name binding would presumably need quotations ala Joy/Factor, which means your stacks probably have to store objects rather than raw numbers. This tips the scale in the direction of a higher-level language. The stacks are likewise a description of semantics rather than implementation. Some Forths keep the top few stack elements in registers to reduce overhead. If the return stack isn't user-accessible (r> >r etc.) then, again, you're straying closer to a higher-level functional language than a Forth. There are many kinds of threaded code. For example, subroutine-threaded code uses native subroutine call instructions in word bodies and does away with the inner interpreter. Threaded code is a natural consequence of disentangling conventional "activation records" into two stacks which grow and shrink independently. You could have a Forth without threaded code, I suppose. Some Forths attempt to "seal off" or otherwise obscure some parts of their own internal workings from "user programs". This is more common among dialects which try to adhere to ANS specs, like GForth. This isn't a total anathema to Forthiness, but it tends to introduce additional complexity. If a word is useful for implementing a forth kernel, why couldn't it be useful in implementing other functionality, too? If you're building something higher-level which vaguely resembles Forth, it's probably better to describe it as a concatenative language. A dependent type system doesn't sound very Forthy, imo.
      - lebuffon 6y ago
        "You could have a Forth without threaded code, I suppose." VFX Forth from MPE UK is a native code generator. It evaluates source code and emits inline code or calls depending what you tell the compiler to do. It can expand everything to inline if you tell it but your code would get much bigger. This is the state of the art for Forth compilers today. Homemade systems and older systems use threaded code. I have no affiliation with MPE.
- moonchild 6y ago
  Not really. Function definitions look different, and we can declare variables in the middle of function bodies, but those are surface-level changes. The language itself hasn't changed appreciably.
downerending 6y ago
I suspect that a lot of readers have no idea how old it is. (I, on the other hand, have to be reminded that 50 years have passed.)
crousto 6y ago
Collapse OS was initially written in assembly for the Z80, a microprocessor first launched in 1976. The fact that Forth is 6 years older than the Z80 seems interesting enough of a step further back in time to be hightlighted.
lstodd 6y ago
It's odd to compare C and Forth. They are so different. Edit: as someone below mentioned there can not be a 'Standard Forth'. You just write your own one as you see fit.
- bitwize 6y ago
  There's ANS Forth. Chuck Moore doesn't like it, but it exists.
moonchild 6y ago
Not to mention lisp, in which HN is written.

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago

I'm delighted to see that hsoft took suggestions about Forth to heart, and that it has lead to both simplification and enrichment of the project.

monadic2 6y ago

Is the focus on forth to rapidly bootstrap from more than just z80, or for readability, or for some other concern?

messe 6y ago
Not the developer, just a forth enthusiast. But I'd imagine it's the ability to rapidly bootstrap on other architectures. Readability is just a bonus on top of that. The focus of CollapseOS is, well, an OS that can be used after society has collapsed, something running on scavenged chips on hand-soldered boards (in the worst case scenario). The original logic was the Z80 is still pretty prevalent, so it was thought to be a good choice to base the OS on. Turns out that a Forth interpreter/compiler is incredibly easy to write (just a few hundred bytes of a assembler, a few thousand at the upper end), so by using Forth they hugely expand the range of scavengeable chips.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

I hate this headline but the project is very cool. People like me who were ignorant should start here instead of the Github to get a better sense of the design goals (and why they are using Forth): https://collapseos.org/forth.html https://collapseos.org/forth.html

dang 6y ago
Ok, we'll change the url to that from https://github.com/hsoft/collapseos/commit/d777a74be30cefc1f097ef2f3b6bba7bde63e44a https://github.com/hsoft/collapseos/commit/d777a74be30cefc1f.... Thanks! (Submitted title was "Collapse OS was entirely rewritten in Forth, a 50 year old language".) The project itself was discussed last year at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628.
- weare138 6y ago
  I think that's a better headline personally...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I've read that page and I'm still wondering why they're using FORTH. C has excellent portability and performance. The article agrees with the general consensus that C is also generally a better language for the programmer. So why use FORTH? What does it matter that it can do cute things with self-hosting? What does 'compactness' matter? If the goal is to build a portable means of writing programs for Z80 and AVR, why not develop a C-like language, or an IR, or put work into developing a serious optimising C compiler targeting the Z80? I get the impression that's a relatively unexplored area for (rather niche) compiler research.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  The rest of the storyline of this page covers what I think is the core concept that Chuck Moore started from, and defines Forth as its own environment: the core of the language that needs to be defined in order to write and execute Forth words is surprisingly small. Once you have the core words in place, you can layer on exactly the constructs you need. I won't claim to be a proficient Forth author, but I've used it to accomplish a couple of rather odd one-off projects, and it is amazing how much you can do, as long as you're not expecting graphics or networking or huge storage needs. Compactness matters because when you're trying to bootstrap into a tiny (or hacked together custom build) environment, the tiny bootstrap footprint means you can be up and rolling that much faster. C is all good, I've been writing it for a long time, but I'd much rather get a Forth core going in raw assembly than even a stripped down to brass tacks C compiler.

messe 6y ago

Nice. Must revisit my own Forth OS, or maybe just start contributing to this.

bsaul 6y ago

First time i hear about this project and i love it. I often talk with a friend who's an historian, and that makes me realize how our relationship with time, as an industry, is extremely short sighted. The internet archive is an immensely valuable project, as well as all the websites archiving old documentation, etc. But i don't think a lot of people realize the value of things they're destroying everytime they execute a delete statement in a DB or a filesystem. This Collapse OS ambition to be able to "bootstrap" something useful over any kind of primitive hardware and sustain the passage of time ( or catastrophic event) may have an immense value in the future.

onetom 6y ago
DELETE statement... That's far too obvious. With every UPDATE statement you are forgetting the past, yet it's still the goto DB paradigm! It's okay to constantly lose information apparently... And it's not like we don't have alternatives. There is Datomic of course, but also juxt/crux and DataHike.

dang 6y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 from last year.

tarkin2 6y ago

I love this project. Thank you for posting it. The idea of a post collapse operating system reminds me of slackware/subgenius’s old slogan: “...the world ends tomorrow and you may die!” I’ll be trying to compile collapseos, write forth and load slackware on floppys in a few years then. (Will systemd survive civilisation’s collapse, especially when it caused it, that is the question....)

mhd 6y ago
For me this is slightly into Poe's Law territory: Is this actual prepper mindset, or tongue-in-cheek?
- tarkin2 6y ago
  Thanks. I'd never heard of that law before. I think he's serious. I'll appreciate his work both pre and pos civilisation collapse. I like his software aesthetic too. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm seeking more control, maybe the world has come needlessly complex, but there's a certain appeal about returning to more manageable days, where it was possible to fit a software and hardware system in your brain, and your brain was swimming with ideas on how to use a limited system rather than drowning in layers of complexity.
  - mhd 6y ago
    I liked playing the Fallout games, I grew up with 8 bit machines, so I'm all in at using a post-apocalyptic scenario as a setup for a though experiment tech stack. In a "ha ha only serious" manner. But on the other hand, real preppers scare the effing s out out of me.

undershirt 6y ago

> Forth doesn't elegantly describe complex algorithms… However, this mental pain does makes you question your need for complexity… This is something that I think few developers are familiar with and is hard to describe with words. It needs to be experienced. Nice framing, that it’s not an intellectual argument you can make to justify the benefits of drawbacks (i.e. an infamous red flag of stockholm syndrome), so you have to point to the experience of the thing itself (“you had to be there”).

hxegon 6y ago
Or there are experiences which have hard to describe intangible qualities that are hard to put logically. Not sure why you have to reach for stockholm syndrome here.
- undershirt 6y ago
  my comment was way off the mark, didn’t realized it sounded sarcastic. i was instead trying to appreciate his approach to the intangible—pointing to direct experience to avoid stockholm criticism.
zentiggr 6y ago
I'll agree with the article's author - there is a quality to a Forth-style solution that just doesn't compare to other languages' styles or overall structure. When I first heard of Forth and started trying out some of my own code, I was surprised by the initial effort it took me to adjust to writing small words vs C style functions. I then started building on the pieces I first wrote, and it took very little code to cover my needs. So yes, there's a very different experience, and it does take adjustment for anyone only familiar with function-style code. And it is not just what I've described, there's a whole different thought pattern involved.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html "That being said, I don't consider it unreasonable to not believe that collapse is likely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs." Triple negative? Quadruple negative? (If we count the second "don't".) Compare something like: "I consider it reasonable to believe that collapse is unlikely to happen by 2030, so please, don't feel attacked by my beliefs." It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author.

bondarchuk 6y ago
>It is almost as if the grammatical structure reflects the life perspective of the author. That seems like a perfectly valid thing for grammatical structure to do, although this one tripped me up admittedly.
microcolonel 6y ago
There's a difference between “not unreasonable” and “reasonable”.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  Can you provide more details?
  - stan_rogers 6y ago
    It's the difference between "not crazy" (ie, "you don't agree with me, and that's okay") and "sane" (ie, "I'm wrong here").
  - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
    There's a difference between "x is not negative" and "x is positive" (¬(x < 0) ⇏ (x > 0)). Why shouldn't a similar subtlety (or a larger one) exist in prosaic language?
    - pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

jstanley 6y ago

If this gets you interested in z80 hardware, I would recommend building an RC2014: https://rc2014.co.uk/ https://rc2014.co.uk/ I built an RC2014 after CollapseOS was posted last year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I ended up adding a front panel, complete with switches and lights, to allow toggling in and executing code without a ROM, and also wrote a HTTP/1.0 server for CP/M (which was an enormous headache for lots of different reasons). Never did get around to running CollapseOS on it though.

mdbauman 6y ago
I love this project, and check in on it every few months. I particularly like the idea of scavenging hardware: > With a copy of this project, a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install Collapse OS without external resources (i.e. internet) on a machine of her design, built from scavenged parts with low-tech tools. I'd be interested in trying to build my own proof-of-concept, but my hardware experience pretty much starts and stops with kids' electronics kits from 20 years ago. Assuming I can scavenge a Z80, what would be a logical next step? What books/other resources should I be reading to learn more?
- KajMagnus 6y ago
  > > a capable and creative person should be able to manage to build and install > trying to build What if there was a crowdfunding project to pay different people, to actually do this? They could find unclear things in the docs, or missing docs. Usability Testing, sort of, of Collapse OS? This is maybe pretty important after all :- ) More important than Fly-to-Mars rockets?
- jstanley 6y ago
  Definitely read (at least the first chapters of) the Z80 cpu manual: http://z80.info/zip/z80cpu_um.pdf http://z80.info/zip/z80cpu_um.pdf It gets a bit dry when it gets to the bit that documents the individual instructions, but the overview before that point is well worth reading. Once you've done that and you're trying to write code, this page is a good reference for the instructions: http://clrhome.org/table/ http://clrhome.org/table/ To build a scavenged machine, you'll need a Z80 CPU, a clock source (I think an RC oscillator would be the simplest working setup?), probably some sort of ROM, an SRAM, some sort of IO device (probably a Z80 SIO/2 for serial), and a 5V power supply. I think that should be all that is required. Then you need to load your code into the ROM at address 0. Then you can connect the SIO to a USB serial cable (e.g. FTDI) and communicate with your Z80 using a modern PC. I can't remember if the SIO/2 needs external address decoding logic, maybe you could cope without it if you are happy for it to use up every address? But building an RC2014 would be easier and more likely to result in a working machine, and would give you almost all the knowledge required to build a scavenged one later if you still want to.

mshockwave 6y ago

this might be a dumb question but can someone briefly explain why Forth is more suitable over C or other languages in general on post-apocalyptic OS?

gridlockd 6y ago
It is very small.
yellowapple 6y ago
- It's tiny and dead simple to implement - It sits very close to assembly - It allows high-level programming like in C - The concept of pushing/popping things onto/off the stack is a relatively straightforward programming model when done consistently One of the old competitors to the likes of UEFI and uBoot is OpenFirmware (also known as OpenBoot), for which the primary UI is a Forth shell; OpenFirmware was the BIOS equivalent for Sun's SPARC workstations/servers (and still is for Oracle's/Fujistu's SPARC servers, last I checked) and most POWER hardware (including "New World" PowerPC Macs), among others. About the most delightful pre-boot environment I've used; it's a shame it didn't catch on in the x86 or ARM space.
- fouc 6y ago
  Also works great with graphics. PostScript is similar to Forth.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    I got into Forth recently - using Gnu Forth - but got bogged down at my inability to do graphics. There are hardly any Forth programming videos of any kind online, besides the "101" kind, but I found one by a guy who managed to get graphics/windows going, I think with GForth. (Can't find it on youtube now.) Looked mega-complicated. So lately back into Tcl/Tk, which also satisfies my "bizarre, powerful and very cool language" itch but actually makes graphics/windows super-easy. I do think Forth is awesome though! After getting into Forth I got into PostScript, which does have most of the Forth fun/freedom taken out of it. It's not usable for GUI-type programming is it?

krick 6y ago

I thought this is pretty fun project and the idea is just cool right away, but then I went on reading and was surprised by the fact it seems the author is serious. I would be really curious to hear his opinion on why the supply chains should collapse before 2030. Obviously, there wouldn't be a shortage of people in the comments who can start speculating on why it might happen, and, of course, I myself also can provide a couple of feasible scenarios, but nobody of us were serious enough to actually start this project, so his opinion on the matter is somehow quite more interesting to me than it would normally be.

slim 6y ago
he gives a book name "Comment tout peut s'effondrer" by Pablo Servigne, Éditions du Seuil, 2015 https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html
- jcranmer 6y ago
  There's apparently an English translation released very recently: "How everything can collapse: A manual for our times." I haven't read either version, but piecing together the thesis from reviews, it seems to be a somewhat more evolved form of Malthusian catastrophe and Peak Oil(/Energy), with a dash of climate change alarmism [1] and Piketty-style concern over inequality. And technology won't save us because... well, I haven't found anyone who can elucidate that concern. It seems to me that the commenter who wrote "this book seems to be only for those who were convinced beforehand" has it right. [1] I don't like using "alarmism" here because it suggests that I don't think it's a problem (I do), but I can't think of a better succinct description of "if we don't fix this literally tomorrow, we're totally screwed."
  - lmohseni 6y ago
    > technology won’t save us because... I hope I’m not uncharitably interpreting your comment, but are you saying that technology will be some sort of panacea?
    - 6y ago

bitwize 6y ago

This is the kind of malarkey I'd get up to on a personal project of mine. Like, I wonder if I'd get farther if I'd written it in Forth/TinyScheme/Erlang? May as well completely overhaul it and find out!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mlang23 6y ago

Forth is one of the last languages on my list. Whenever I read something like this article, I want to learn it. The advice at the end of the article seems interesting. Does anyone have any resources that might help with this?

japanoise 6y ago
A Forth shibboleth is that you have to implement your own in order to understand it. Try reading the assembly, then forth source, for jonesforth: https://github.com/AlexandreAbreu/jonesforth https://github.com/AlexandreAbreu/jonesforth This is how I learned.
- mlang23 6y ago
  Oh wow, thanks. That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
  - gmfawcett 6y ago
    Original repository and introductory article: http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=shortlog http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=shortlog https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jonesforth-git-repository/ https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jonesforth-git-reposit...
    - mlang23 6y ago
      For anyone stumbling over this and having trouble to build it, I had to figure out two things: 1. When building on x86_64 Debian, I had to install linux-libc-dev:i386 to get /usr/include/i386-linux-gnu/asm/unistd.h. I also had to adapt the include path to have it actually found. 2. If you see a segfault when running the executable, you likely need to remove -Wl,-Ttext,0 from the build command. At least on my system, it fixes the segfaults and now jonesforth runs as expected.

haolez 6y ago

> Some Forth enthusiasts like the language for itself. They think that its easier to express much of the logic of a program in this language. Many books and tutorials are touting this. [...] That's not my opinion. In my opinion, it's not that FORTH code is hard to read, but that FORTH gives the programmer so much freedom that every program becomes its own microcosm of DSLs.

DonHopkins 6y ago
: C(-; LICK SMILE NOSE WINK ; ( See my profile for more microcosmic FORTH DSLs! ) c(-; https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins

Koshkin 6y ago

CollapseOS? Meh. What we need is ApocalypsOS. Something to play Tetris on after having hauled a bucket of wellwater (and some wood) to the 23-rd floor apartment where I try to survive.

megameter 6y ago

If I had to put my finger on why Forth is hard for most programmers, it's like this: the structured program theorem suggests using sequence, selection, and iteration to control program logic. Assembly code on hardware architectures will assign all meaning sequence-relative, late-binding the selection and iteration. Forth doubles down on this sequence-first approach through a more versatile assignment mode(the stack) while only minimally accommodating the other two. That makes it easy to implement, while not explicitly addressing expressability. Forth written "flat" with shallow data stack usage is assembly by another name, a wrapper for load-and-store; Forth that does everything with intricate stack manipulation is a source of endless puzzles since it quickly goes write-only. But, like any good language with meta expression capabilities, you can work your way up towards complex constructs in Forth, and write words that enforce whatever conceptual boundaries are needed and thus check your work and use the system as a compiler. That's what breaks Forth away from being a simple macro-assembler. But you have to write it in that direction, and design the system that makes sense for the task from the very beginning. That falls into an unacceptable trade-off really easily in our current world, where the majority of developers are relatively inexperienced consumers of innumerable dependencies.

andrewflnr 6y ago
Interesting perspective. For anyone else who wasn't familiar with this usage of "selection": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_program_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_program_theorem
monadic2 6y ago
> But, like any good language with meta expression capabilities, you can work your way up towards complex constructs in Forth, and write words that enforce whatever conceptual boundaries are needed and thus check your work and use the system as a compiler. That's what breaks Forth away from being a simple macro-assembler. But you have to write it in that direction, and design the system that makes sense for the task from the very beginning. That falls into an unacceptable trade-off really easily in our current world, where the majority of developers are relatively inexperienced consumers of innumerable dependencies. Well expressed, I often think of the stack as the syntax of the language, not the runtime implementation, and it is quite difficult to hire for this skill without spending a lot of money.

fouc 6y ago

I keep hoping that a Rubyist will someday do the same thing for Forth like José Valim did for Erlang, with Elixir.

imode 6y ago

If the author wants their code to survive the apocalypse, they should generate Turing Machines that have a simple shim interpreter for low-power architectures. The benefit of this is you can build an interpreter for a TM in wood or other simple materials. Semi-Thue systems also fit.

imode 6y ago
I don't get why this is downvoted.
- carapace 6y ago
  Me neither. I like it but the limiting factor on post-apocalyptic digital electronics will be access to datasheets, eh? It would be interesting to build a minimal useful CPU out of fluidics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics
  - imode 6y ago
    Definitely. Or mechanical logic gates. But the surface area would very quickly become an issue for such a project, and you'd need to assume only a certain few tools.
    - carapace 6y ago
      True. I wonder what kind of computations people would need to do that would make it worthwhile to make big, slow computers? I bet it would be easier to make up "sacred dances" that incorporated processing in the motions of the dancers. And let's not forget that a human with an abacus can do a great deal of the math required for everyday life. :-)

zentiggr 6y ago

I think I've had my own moment of clarity that spans both Forth(s) and Lisp(s) and explains why neither is as common as other languages. In most common languages, there is a complicated base spec that covers many cases and defines a broad range of affordances, plus libraries and libraries that expand on an already fleshed out collection of tools and etc. Forths and Lisps give you the core of an environment, and let/expect you to build on the foundation to create your own implementation. Like someone else in this thread said, N programmers, N dialects. Or, more accurately, every Forth program is its own DSL for accomplishing its work.

sahil-kang 6y ago
I think you can draw this ‘core of an environment’ parallel between Forth and Scheme: both are small languages and they emphasize growing the language to the problem domain [1]. Common Lisp, on the other hand, is a large language: implementations provide much more than a foundational core, and a fairly comprehensive list of libraries exists. I think RPG’s Worse Is Better highlights some of the reasons why CL isn’t as popular as other languages [2]. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 [2] https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html
- pkage 6y ago
  Off topic, but this (from RPG's Worse is Better) sounds very familiar: > Part of the problem stems from our very dear friends in the artificial intelligence (AI) business. AI has a number of good approaches to formalizing human knowledge and problem solving behavior. However, AI does not provide a panacea in any area of its applicability. Some early promoters of AI to the commercial world raised expectation levels too high. These expectations had to do with the effectiveness and deliverability of expert-system-based applications.
c2the3rd 6y ago
Why not say "Every ~~Forth~~ program is its own DSL for accomplishing its work."? For moderately complicated programs in any language you choose, it can take a long time to grok how the literal code relates to solving the conceptual problem. No language can build in every abstraction, and no programmer has time to learn them all. I think you are close to part of an answer, but it isn't because Forth and Lisp expect one to do more work than other languages. If anything, they expect one to do less. The problem is programmers feel lost because there is no way to differentiate the bedrock of the language from higher abstractions. C has operators and statements and keywords that tell you there is nothing "underneath" what you are looking at. With Forth, everything is words. With Lisp, everything is lists.

jvanderbot 6y ago

I feel sheepish for being on that thread as a detractor, after reading this post.

johnisgood 6y ago

Why not Factor? :P

TurboHaskal 6y ago
Because Forth is more (less?) than a Smalltalk on RPN.

garmaine 6y ago

Forth is Lisp, but with composition as the basic operator instead of application. The result, of course, is a wildly different language but one which inspired the same degree of fanaticism among its adherents in their search for simplicity and elegance. A truly under appreciated language imho.

RodgerTheGreat 6y ago
I rather disagree with your first sentence. Forth is not Lisp, nor is Prolog or APL Lisp, and none of these languages are one short conceptual leap away from the others. Even a very rudimentary Forth can express concepts which have only hazy correspondences in a Lisp, like words which twiddle the return stack or yield a variable number of results on the parameter stack. I find it misleading at best to casually intimate that Lisp is some kind of ur-language which exemplifies simplicity and thus lies at the root of any design space. Fans of Lisp are overly eager to stake claim upon ideas which do not belong to their language. I don't mean to bite your head off about it; this is just a trope I find tremendously frustrating.
- garmaine 6y ago
  The core of Lisp is a small set of rules about abstraction and application using lists. Forth, at its core, can be formalized with the exact same set of rules (one to one correspondence) but with stacks and composition as the operator. The languages are very VERY different, but there is a similar bare bone formal framework at the bottom.
  - maxsun 6y ago
    I'm very new to Forth, but find this intuition really appealing; do you know of any examples that demonstrate/prove this correspondence?
    - garmaine 6y ago
      It’s only the newer “concatenative” languages that have explored this forms correspondence. See this essay by Jon Purdy (author of Kitten) on “why concatenative languages matter”: http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenative-programming-matters.html?m=1 http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenativ...

dreamcompiler 6y ago

There seems to be a common conception that Forth is always interpreted by some kind of virtual machine. But it's quite possible to compile Forth all the way down to native machine instructions with no loss of interactivity and without losing the rapid bootstrap capability the author describes. Such a Forth runs almost as fast as C (almost because modern out-of-order and other processor optimizations probably don't work well on compiled Forth code). I used this approach when I bootstrapped a Forth compiler on the TI 34010 graphics chip in a similar fashion as the author. It even had local variables so you didn't drive yourself mad thinking about the stack all the time. My favorite commercial example of such a Forth was Mach 2 Forth on the early (pre-OSX) Macs. I don't know if any modern Forths do down-to-the-metal compiling or local variables, but I'd be interested to find out.

ehaliewicz2 6y ago
> local variables I believe most modern forths will have these, gnuforth does for example. > down-to-the-metal compiling I think there are some that do this, but back in the day, the opinion of lots of forth programmers was that threaded code was good for the 90% of the program where performance didn't matter, and added an inline assembler for areas where it did.
- Someone 6y ago
  And of course, you can always add support for local variables yourself. For an example, see http://turboforth.net/resources/locals.html http://turboforth.net/resources/locals.html, which takes 808 bytes to implement. That’s hefty, for some systems where one would use Forth, but, FTA, “Placing key values in locals will actually both increase peformance, and make your code smaller”, so you can earn that back if you use the facility enough)

redisman 6y ago

Love this project. I wonder why not make it run on smartphones? I'd imagine that's the vast majority of computers out there today. Easier to find a working smartphone than retro consoles.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Usually it's nontrivial to get anything custom to run on a smartphone, they're pretty locked down like that compared to more general hardware.
eloisius 6y ago
He explained that a bit here[1]. The project targets a world wherein existing computers have degraded to a point beyond repair and we have to scavenge parts that can be retrofitted. His reasoning is that under such conditions, parts that can be thru-hole soldered such as 8-bit z80 CPUs will be much more robust than surface mounted ARM chips. 1: https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Here is a Forth you can use on Linux and Windows http://web.archive.org/web/20080828064920/http://ronware.org/reva/wiki/stable http://web.archive.org/web/20080828064920/http://ronware.org...

TheUndead96 6y ago

The weird thing about history is that it only makes sense backwards. Someone 500 years in the future might think of this as the Gutenberg printing press. It is often difficult to appreciate the magnitude of actions in the present.

hutzlibu 6y ago
Why should they think that? The gutenberg press was used in the real world. There are lots of OS being used in the real world for real work. So why should someone in 500 years think this is more relevant, than for example Linux? And if there is a real collapse, then I also do not really believe everyone makes a run for collapseOS. There are other options: all the ones, tinkerers and hackers use already today.
- TheUndead96 6y ago
  We don't know how history will pan out. Just wanted to share the weird feeling I sometimes have about current events. For all we know, post-collapse technology could be based off QMX reverse-engineered from luxury vehicles. It's just fun to think about how events can have that unexpected butterfly effect. I sometimes catch myself with the implicit belief that we are "late" in the story of history. But given the possible expanse of time, we might be the "hunter-gatherers" of a civilization we cannot even begin to comprehend. This might just be the second of the dark ages.
  - deleted 6y ago
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jbb67 6y ago

I want to learn forth now. Where can I find a modern usable forth that works well on windows to make real programs? Does such a thing even exist?

TurboHaskal 6y ago
You can do just fine with the free versions of SwiftForth and VFX Forth as long as you don't mind that they are 32bit only. If you end up liking it and want 64bit, you can buy iForth for 100 EUR. It's what I use. These are all amazing optimizing compilers. If you care about OSS: Don't waste your time with GForth. If you want something simple that you can hack yourself, take a look at pforth.
- anthk 6y ago
  This. Pforth works really well and the ".S" word is straightforward, while pfe is not. GForth is too difficult; altough you can code for the Game Boy with it, but in order to learn, pforth is more than enough.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

On the topic of compactness: is FORTH ever used in the demoscene? As I understand it, they tend to write assembly, and compress the resulting machine code, for decompression at runtime.

Narishma 6y ago

> The Z80 asm version of Collapse OS self-hosts on a RC2014 with a 5K shell on ROM, a 5K assembler binary loaded in RAM from SD card (but that could be in ROM, that's why I count it as ROM in my project's feature highlights) and 8K of RAM. That is, it can assemble itself from source within those resources. Meanwhile, you can't compile rustc on a 32-bit system because it runs out of address space...

detaro 6y ago

somewhat OT, but are there any active Forth communities/forums to follow if one wants to see what people get up to with it?

tibbydudeza 6y ago

And all I wanted was a pipboy.

onetom 6y ago

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned https://flashforth.com/ https://flashforth.com/ There is no intriguing backstory for it, like for CollapseOS, but it's a ~6 kiloword, practical 4th environment for Microchip PIC microcontrollers, which are a lot simpler than Z80, btw... The source code is trivial to understand too. My father is still using it daily to replace/substitute Caterpillar machine electronics or build custom instruments for biological research projects. We started with Mary(Forth) back then, when the first, very constrained PIC models came out, with 8 deep stack and ~200 bytes of RAM. Later we used the https://rfc1149.net/devel/picforth.html https://rfc1149.net/devel/picforth.html compiler for those, which doesn't provide an interactive environment. I made a MIDI "flute" with that for example, which was fabricated from sawing out a row of keys from a keyboard and used a pen house as a blow pipe and a bent razor with a photo-gate as the blow-pressure detector... There are more minimal Forth OSes, which might be more accessible than a Z80-based one. I would think those are more convenient for learning, how can you have video, keyboard and disk IO, an interactive REPL and compiler in less than 10KB I remember, I played a lot with https://wiki.c2.com/?EnthForth https://wiki.c2.com/?EnthForth But if you really want to see something mind-bending, then you should study Moore's ColorForth! I found it completely unusable, BUT I've learnt immense amount of stuff from it: https://colorforth.github.io/ https://colorforth.github.io/ There are more usable variants of it, btw. Also worth looking into Low Fat computing: http://www.ultratechnology.com/lowfat.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/lowfat.htm I think it's still relevant today.