The thing is, if you want to poke at a device interactively, your options are either Forth or (if the system is beefy enough) one of these scripting language po

The thing is, if you want to poke at a device interactively, your options are either Forth or (if the system is beefy enough) one of these scripting language ports; tethered C interpreters are not precisely commonplace. And while I love Forth to bits, most people will probably go the scripting-language route.