4 ms·

Hacker news may be giving this site the hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20230711163359/https://retroforth.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230711163

Hacker news may be giving this site the hug of death. https://web.archive.org/web/20230711163359/https://retroforth.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230711163359/https://retrofort... Retro is an interesting Forth platform because it has numerous features not present in more traditional Forth systems, such as the ability to create closures and first class literals while still maintaining compactness that would be expected of a Forth system. It was originally meant for desktop scripting but has been ported to tiny devices like microcontrollers. It is worth a look if you are even mildly curious about Forth

Pet_Ant 3y ago
I would love a Forth with a type system. I don't know if that is heretical, but I'd love a higher-order type system for when you are several meta-words deep. Disclaimer: I've only used Factor on Project Euler problems.
- vanderZwan 3y ago
  While not quite a Forth, Kitten is a stack language: https://kittenlang.org/ https://kittenlang.org/
- TapamN 3y ago
  Might not be quite what you're thinking of, but for typed Forth, there's StrongForth, which is statically typed. I wrote a Forth-based scripting system for Dreamcast homebrew, and used StrongForth's type system in it. I would run and edit the scripts live on the console, and the static typing was a big help to prevent errors that could crash the system (since the game ran under a single process, and did not use the MMU). https://www.stephan-becher.de/strongforth/intro.htm https://www.stephan-becher.de/strongforth/intro.htm
  - poldy 3y ago
    Personally I prefer Dr. Becher's follow-on project, StrongForth.f, which is just a library to load into a standard system like gforth (which is probably in your OS's package repo). http://www.arestlessmind.org/2013/08/17/ http://www.arestlessmind.org/2013/08/17/
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That's a nice thing you built! Is it still in use?
    - TapamN 3y ago
      I didn't make StrongForth, I just based my own Forth on it. I've really only used it in my game engine.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  > I would love a Forth with a type system. I don't know if that is heretical [...]. Jack Woehr (of the ANS Forth committee) and Mitch Bradley (of Open Firmware fame) think it’s old hat[1], so guess not. (They also think it probably won’t work though.) In general, people have tried a lot of times; there’s a number of postfix Lisps with type systems—Kitten mentioned elsethread, ActorForth[2], etc.; a low-level Forth, as in identidally sized cells on stack and no automatic memory management, I don’t think has been done to completeness (IIRC either Forth, Inc. or MPE have a standing offer for any that’s able to process their legacy code even just for stack checking), but then C wouldn’t be complete by that standard either (and Rust far too limiting). Honestly I’m not sure how well it would work. In C, you get a great deal of utility out of compound types, and classic cell-oriented Forth kind of sucks at even mildly complex datastructures—they are certainly possible, but being unable to manipulate them as values on the stack makes things quite unnatural. (And that’s where I draw the line between Forths proper and “postfix Lisps” like PostScript, Joy, and Factor, as such manipulation doesn’t seem feasible without some sort of automatic memory management.) [1] https://github.com/ForthHub/discussion/issues/79#issuecomment-453621813 https://github.com/ForthHub/discussion/issues/79#issuecommen... [2] https://github.com/ActorForth/ActorForth https://github.com/ActorForth/ActorForth
- tengwar2 3y ago
  There are a few stack-based languages that you might enjoy. Pop-11 is a typed open stack language roughly at the level of Common Lisp. RPL (originally "reverse Polish Lisp") is an interpretive stack based language on some HP calculators.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  I'm slowly working on one. The repo is a mess and the examples don't actually run (they're sketches of where I'm trying to go; the unit tests in the Zig source are a better idea of where I'm actually at so far), but I'm attempting to slap a "minimum viable "does this shape align with this other shape" type of type system" onto a loosely-FORTH-inspired stack machine with some modern amenities with Gale. https://sr.ht/~klardotsh/gale/ https://sr.ht/~klardotsh/gale/ (or for the GitHub fans, https://github.com/klardotsh/gale https://github.com/klardotsh/gale)
  - mst 3y ago
    When I'm working on something like that I tend to literally have a directory called sketches/ in the root of the repo, a few of which will currently run, a few more of which -did- run at some point, and then the rest are more thinking out loud than anything else. Calling it that straight out the gate reminds me not to worry too much about it and just get the thing down into a file for future reference, if I derive a 'real' version of anything in there that I intend to both run now and to stay running I'll put that somewhere else (and leave the sketch in place for historical curiosity purposes).
- jwmcq 3y ago
  I've only used Forth briefly, but one of the things I loved about it is that it almost has the opposite of a type system - everything is just 'memory' - but you just build words around that and barely even notice. I've seen people recommend C as a way to "get closer to the hardware", but I think we all know that that's not really been a thing for longer than most of us have been alive. Forth, though? Maybe!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vegabook 3y ago
    Forth is the only language I have dabbled with that in some ways feels lower level than assembler itself.
- mk12 3y ago
  smaddox is working on one called Dawn: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dawn-lang.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dawn-lang.org There hasn't been an update in over a year but I hope it's still going because it looked really interesting.
- mksybr 3y ago
  Factor is a typed forth descendent
  - kencausey 3y ago
    https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/
  - klooney 3y ago
    It was such a HN darling back when it HN first launched.
- mikewarot 3y ago
  MStoical[1] is a fork of a fork of Stoic[2], which has toggle-able runtime type checking. It supports the following parameter types for each parameter (see the docs) short long ----- ---- * bah ( don't care ) f float s string r reference p pointer io stream ( file / socket ) a array h hash c clause I'm not a C programmer, and it took a fair bit of help from folks here on HN to get it compiling (it was forked from a 20 year old C source), for which I'm grateful. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOIC

Pet_Ant 3y ago

I would love a Forth with a type system. I don't know if that is heretical, but I'd love a higher-order type system for when you are several meta-words deep. Disclaimer: I've only used Factor on Project Euler problems.

vanderZwan 3y ago
While not quite a Forth, Kitten is a stack language: https://kittenlang.org/ https://kittenlang.org/
TapamN 3y ago
Might not be quite what you're thinking of, but for typed Forth, there's StrongForth, which is statically typed. I wrote a Forth-based scripting system for Dreamcast homebrew, and used StrongForth's type system in it. I would run and edit the scripts live on the console, and the static typing was a big help to prevent errors that could crash the system (since the game ran under a single process, and did not use the MMU). https://www.stephan-becher.de/strongforth/intro.htm https://www.stephan-becher.de/strongforth/intro.htm
- poldy 3y ago
  Personally I prefer Dr. Becher's follow-on project, StrongForth.f, which is just a library to load into a standard system like gforth (which is probably in your OS's package repo). http://www.arestlessmind.org/2013/08/17/ http://www.arestlessmind.org/2013/08/17/
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's a nice thing you built! Is it still in use?
  - TapamN 3y ago
    I didn't make StrongForth, I just based my own Forth on it. I've really only used it in my game engine.
mananaysiempre 3y ago
> I would love a Forth with a type system. I don't know if that is heretical [...]. Jack Woehr (of the ANS Forth committee) and Mitch Bradley (of Open Firmware fame) think it’s old hat[1], so guess not. (They also think it probably won’t work though.) In general, people have tried a lot of times; there’s a number of postfix Lisps with type systems—Kitten mentioned elsethread, ActorForth[2], etc.; a low-level Forth, as in identidally sized cells on stack and no automatic memory management, I don’t think has been done to completeness (IIRC either Forth, Inc. or MPE have a standing offer for any that’s able to process their legacy code even just for stack checking), but then C wouldn’t be complete by that standard either (and Rust far too limiting). Honestly I’m not sure how well it would work. In C, you get a great deal of utility out of compound types, and classic cell-oriented Forth kind of sucks at even mildly complex datastructures—they are certainly possible, but being unable to manipulate them as values on the stack makes things quite unnatural. (And that’s where I draw the line between Forths proper and “postfix Lisps” like PostScript, Joy, and Factor, as such manipulation doesn’t seem feasible without some sort of automatic memory management.) [1] https://github.com/ForthHub/discussion/issues/79#issuecomment-453621813 https://github.com/ForthHub/discussion/issues/79#issuecommen... [2] https://github.com/ActorForth/ActorForth https://github.com/ActorForth/ActorForth
tengwar2 3y ago
There are a few stack-based languages that you might enjoy. Pop-11 is a typed open stack language roughly at the level of Common Lisp. RPL (originally "reverse Polish Lisp") is an interpretive stack based language on some HP calculators.
klardotsh 3y ago
I'm slowly working on one. The repo is a mess and the examples don't actually run (they're sketches of where I'm trying to go; the unit tests in the Zig source are a better idea of where I'm actually at so far), but I'm attempting to slap a "minimum viable "does this shape align with this other shape" type of type system" onto a loosely-FORTH-inspired stack machine with some modern amenities with Gale. https://sr.ht/~klardotsh/gale/ https://sr.ht/~klardotsh/gale/ (or for the GitHub fans, https://github.com/klardotsh/gale https://github.com/klardotsh/gale)
- mst 3y ago
  When I'm working on something like that I tend to literally have a directory called sketches/ in the root of the repo, a few of which will currently run, a few more of which -did- run at some point, and then the rest are more thinking out loud than anything else. Calling it that straight out the gate reminds me not to worry too much about it and just get the thing down into a file for future reference, if I derive a 'real' version of anything in there that I intend to both run now and to stay running I'll put that somewhere else (and leave the sketch in place for historical curiosity purposes).
jwmcq 3y ago
I've only used Forth briefly, but one of the things I loved about it is that it almost has the opposite of a type system - everything is just 'memory' - but you just build words around that and barely even notice. I've seen people recommend C as a way to "get closer to the hardware", but I think we all know that that's not really been a thing for longer than most of us have been alive. Forth, though? Maybe!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vegabook 3y ago
  Forth is the only language I have dabbled with that in some ways feels lower level than assembler itself.
mk12 3y ago
smaddox is working on one called Dawn: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dawn-lang.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dawn-lang.org There hasn't been an update in over a year but I hope it's still going because it looked really interesting.
mksybr 3y ago
Factor is a typed forth descendent
- kencausey 3y ago
  https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/
- klooney 3y ago
  It was such a HN darling back when it HN first launched.
mikewarot 3y ago
MStoical[1] is a fork of a fork of Stoic[2], which has toggle-able runtime type checking. It supports the following parameter types for each parameter (see the docs) short long ----- ---- * bah ( don't care ) f float s string r reference p pointer io stream ( file / socket ) a array h hash c clause I'm not a C programmer, and it took a fair bit of help from folks here on HN to get it compiling (it was forked from a 20 year old C source), for which I'm grateful. [1] https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical https://github.com/mikewarot/mstoical [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOIC