4 ms·

Any reasons to code in Forth these days, besides intellectual exercise?

by zerr 5y ago

qsort 5y ago
It's very easy to bootstrap and can be made Turing-incomplete if needed. Bitcoin script is a Forth IIRC.
- whartung 5y ago
  Speaking of this, I've always loved this paper [1] about Forth. And it's a real eye opener. It's a real eye opener when you understand that primitives such as assignment and variable references are, indeed, in Forth, actual primitives. Primitives that can be readily changed. Combine this with a venerable Forth (cross)assembler and it's pretty powerful for all of its simplicity. This is bootstrapping without even a boot, just need a sniglet. [1] https://pygmy.utoh.org/3ins4th.html https://pygmy.utoh.org/3ins4th.html
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > It's very easy to bootstrap Indeed. In college, I designed a stack based CPU that made it trivially easy to build a Forth compiler for it. It also had registers, because I started with a register based design, but the microcode fleshed out stack based instructions and the registers were mostly for storing data outside the stack.
  - RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
    Chuck is quite fond of indexing registers on his forth machines; they make operations like memory copies much less messy than exclusively keeping state on the parameter stack.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      It's a shame it was never built as real hardware (or a relief, as it'd probably have all sort of analog and timing issues), but it was really sweet to program.
      - ngcc_hk 5y ago
        Not even fpga?
nmz 5y ago
This? https://youtu.be/55234oZ0EDU https://youtu.be/55234oZ0EDU factor[1] also looks like a nice language. In reality though? we should only code in CPP/C/JS [1] https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/
int_19h 5y ago
Bootstrapping a development environment on an exotic and/or very resource-constrained platform. The neat thing about Forth is that, once you have the kernel running, and can hook some simple I/O to it (e.g serial), you basically have a remote REPL. And this can be made to work on devices where RAM is measured in kilobytes.

Any reasons to code in Forth these days, besides intellectual exercise?

by zerr 5y ago

Any reasons to code in Forth these days, besides intellectual exercise?

qsort 5y ago

It's very easy to bootstrap and can be made Turing-incomplete if needed. Bitcoin script is a Forth IIRC.

whartung 5y ago
Speaking of this, I've always loved this paper [1] about Forth. And it's a real eye opener. It's a real eye opener when you understand that primitives such as assignment and variable references are, indeed, in Forth, actual primitives. Primitives that can be readily changed. Combine this with a venerable Forth (cross)assembler and it's pretty powerful for all of its simplicity. This is bootstrapping without even a boot, just need a sniglet. [1] https://pygmy.utoh.org/3ins4th.html https://pygmy.utoh.org/3ins4th.html
rbanffy 5y ago
> It's very easy to bootstrap Indeed. In college, I designed a stack based CPU that made it trivially easy to build a Forth compiler for it. It also had registers, because I started with a register based design, but the microcode fleshed out stack based instructions and the registers were mostly for storing data outside the stack.
- RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
  Chuck is quite fond of indexing registers on his forth machines; they make operations like memory copies much less messy than exclusively keeping state on the parameter stack.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    It's a shame it was never built as real hardware (or a relief, as it'd probably have all sort of analog and timing issues), but it was really sweet to program.
    - ngcc_hk 5y ago
      Not even fpga?

nmz 5y ago

This? https://youtu.be/55234oZ0EDU https://youtu.be/55234oZ0EDU factor[1] also looks like a nice language. In reality though? we should only code in CPP/C/JS [1] https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/

int_19h 5y ago

Bootstrapping a development environment on an exotic and/or very resource-constrained platform. The neat thing about Forth is that, once you have the kernel running, and can hook some simple I/O to it (e.g serial), you basically have a remote REPL. And this can be made to work on devices where RAM is measured in kilobytes.