4 ms·

I came here expecting at least some mention of Forth. What a nice language that allows you to redefine most of the provided keywords!

nwatson 4y ago
A great language, I cut some of my programming teeth with GraFORTH on Apple II in 1982/1983 in high school. I wish I still had some of my old floppy disks. I did some floating-horizon for plotting f(x,y) and some basic animations. A friend and I did some demo programs for a couple of local entrepreneurs (Romel and Ludimar in case you're out there) selling Apple II clones, the MicroEngenho, in Brasília. Our work, displayed at a trade show, made it onto the nightly news. MicroEngenho: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9CsdGHybw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9CsdGHybw EDIT: YouTube link
Someone 4y ago
Most? Which ones can’t you redefine? The ‘normal’ way to redefine words in forth is a bit of cheating, though. Redefining a word merely introduces a word with a name that shadows that of the old, still existing word. Words created before the definition still call the old implementation, and, depending on the implementation (a phrase that, I think applies to about any statement about forth) you can still find it when you walk the dictionary and call it. Smalltalk is missing too, and that’s a bigger omission. When you redefine a function there, it starts getting used everywhere. I wonder what a blog post written about this 50 years from now will look like. Would it still mention C and lisp? Would readers of said article still mention forth and smalltalk as missing? Also, what reasonably successful languages from the ‘60s/‘70s already are gone from the collective mind? Being used today to write very popular OSes, I see C still being mentioned, but by then lisp might have fallen into the abyss of history (except for, probably, a few computer historians)
- Zak 4y ago
  > by then lisp might have fallen into the abyss of history I don't think so, because being a lisp is a trait of a language rather than a specific language. Scheme is a lisp. Racket is a lisp. Clojure is a lisp. People keep making new ones because lisp continues to be a useful idea. It keeps not quite going mainstream, the reasons for which have been subject to much speculation. It's most likely that there will be some semi-popular lisp in 50 years.
  - lispm 4y ago
    There are languages which have Lisp in their name for a reason: Emacs Lisp, Visual Lisp, ISLisp, Common Lisp, ... Historically Interlisp (see https://interlisp.org https://interlisp.org ), Standard Lisp (see REDUCE), and many others.
ecpottinger 4y ago
Yes, the first thing I thought of was FORTH.
- jjcc 4y ago
  Yes. The same.

nwatson 4y ago

A great language, I cut some of my programming teeth with GraFORTH on Apple II in 1982/1983 in high school. I wish I still had some of my old floppy disks. I did some floating-horizon for plotting f(x,y) and some basic animations. A friend and I did some demo programs for a couple of local entrepreneurs (Romel and Ludimar in case you're out there) selling Apple II clones, the MicroEngenho, in Brasília. Our work, displayed at a trade show, made it onto the nightly news. MicroEngenho: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9CsdGHybw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9CsdGHybw EDIT: YouTube link

Someone 4y ago

Most? Which ones can’t you redefine? The ‘normal’ way to redefine words in forth is a bit of cheating, though. Redefining a word merely introduces a word with a name that shadows that of the old, still existing word. Words created before the definition still call the old implementation, and, depending on the implementation (a phrase that, I think applies to about any statement about forth) you can still find it when you walk the dictionary and call it. Smalltalk is missing too, and that’s a bigger omission. When you redefine a function there, it starts getting used everywhere. I wonder what a blog post written about this 50 years from now will look like. Would it still mention C and lisp? Would readers of said article still mention forth and smalltalk as missing? Also, what reasonably successful languages from the ‘60s/‘70s already are gone from the collective mind? Being used today to write very popular OSes, I see C still being mentioned, but by then lisp might have fallen into the abyss of history (except for, probably, a few computer historians)

Zak 4y ago
> by then lisp might have fallen into the abyss of history I don't think so, because being a lisp is a trait of a language rather than a specific language. Scheme is a lisp. Racket is a lisp. Clojure is a lisp. People keep making new ones because lisp continues to be a useful idea. It keeps not quite going mainstream, the reasons for which have been subject to much speculation. It's most likely that there will be some semi-popular lisp in 50 years.
- lispm 4y ago
  There are languages which have Lisp in their name for a reason: Emacs Lisp, Visual Lisp, ISLisp, Common Lisp, ... Historically Interlisp (see https://interlisp.org https://interlisp.org ), Standard Lisp (see REDUCE), and many others.

ecpottinger 4y ago

Yes, the first thing I thought of was FORTH.

jjcc 4y ago
Yes. The same.