3 ms·

Nobody has mentioned low-level programming in a REPL. Not as common to be sure. Forth works this way and even has REPL Assembly Language. It's been there for

Nobody has mentioned low-level programming in a REPL. Not as common to be sure. Forth works this way and even has REPL Assembly Language. It's been there for over 40 years. Testing Forth and ASM code snippets in the REPL before committing to them helps eliminate those nasty assumptions about what "should" work.

mikelevins 6y ago
Agreed, FORTH is repl-driven in the sense I mean. The main difference from Lisp and Smalltalk systems is that FORTH environments are, generally speaking, more spartan. In the late 1980s I had a group of friends at Apple that included Smalltalk, Lisp, and FORTH programmers. We certainly found plenty of things to admire and attempt to steal from one another, and everyone accepted the basic goodness of building systems by engaging in conversation with them as they run. Lisp and Smalltalk cross-pollenated each other more than each did with FORTH, but maybe Slava Pestov's Factor is a glimpse of what you get if FORTH is more in the mix.
- 0x445442 6y ago
  Yeah, Factor's environment looks really similar to something like Smalltalk. The thing with Forth is that it looks really daunting to perform higher level tasks that I'd be interested in performing on a day to day basis.
  - mikelevins 6y ago
    It can definitely be done, but historically, that's not really been its sweet spot.
  - lebuffon 6y ago
    Forth's answer to your need is: Write your own higher level utilities in Forth. :) I find it better to think of Forth as a clever Macro Assembly language for a two stack VM. When used as designed, one does not actually program in Forth. You first write a tiny "language" and program the App in that. Not a popular choice today.
mikelevins 6y ago
Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the cool features of Macintosh Common Lisp was its interactive assembler. You could write "LAP" ("Lisp Assembly Program") code in the repl, just like you could write Lisp code. Around the time that MacFrames morphed into SK8, Apple hired an arcade-game programmer named Dave Vronay to work on the SK8 graphics subsystem. When I first met him, he was over the moon about MCL and how great it was to write assembly code in a repl and run it right now.

mikelevins 6y ago

Agreed, FORTH is repl-driven in the sense I mean. The main difference from Lisp and Smalltalk systems is that FORTH environments are, generally speaking, more spartan. In the late 1980s I had a group of friends at Apple that included Smalltalk, Lisp, and FORTH programmers. We certainly found plenty of things to admire and attempt to steal from one another, and everyone accepted the basic goodness of building systems by engaging in conversation with them as they run. Lisp and Smalltalk cross-pollenated each other more than each did with FORTH, but maybe Slava Pestov's Factor is a glimpse of what you get if FORTH is more in the mix.

0x445442 6y ago
Yeah, Factor's environment looks really similar to something like Smalltalk. The thing with Forth is that it looks really daunting to perform higher level tasks that I'd be interested in performing on a day to day basis.
- mikelevins 6y ago
  It can definitely be done, but historically, that's not really been its sweet spot.
- lebuffon 6y ago
  Forth's answer to your need is: Write your own higher level utilities in Forth. :) I find it better to think of Forth as a clever Macro Assembly language for a two stack VM. When used as designed, one does not actually program in Forth. You first write a tiny "language" and program the App in that. Not a popular choice today.

mikelevins 6y ago

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the cool features of Macintosh Common Lisp was its interactive assembler. You could write "LAP" ("Lisp Assembly Program") code in the repl, just like you could write Lisp code. Around the time that MacFrames morphed into SK8, Apple hired an arcade-game programmer named Dave Vronay to work on the SK8 graphics subsystem. When I first met him, he was over the moon about MCL and how great it was to write assembly code in a repl and run it right now.