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I've been using Forth for a while to write small video games, and honestly I find the process delightful. The extreme simplicity and flexibility of the language

I've been using Forth for a while to write small video games, and honestly I find the process delightful. The extreme simplicity and flexibility of the language lend themselves well to the kind of special-case explosion that often occurs as I tinker with game logic, and puzzling out the cleanest way to express complicated ideas is very intellectially satisfying. Working on a simulated game console with no underlying operating system and unrestricted access to memory seems to be an ideal case for the language. If anybody's curious, all my development tools and forth code are on github: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako

sehugg 14y ago
Looks pretty neat! I've been thinking of using FORTH in the same way; I'll be really interested to read through your sample games. (I played around with GraFORTH on the Apple ][ back in the day, and I remember it was wicked fast, and kinda fun)
- RodgerTheGreat 14y ago
  Thanks! There's a few things about my dialect of Forth that are unusual if you've worked with Forth before, mainly just the fact that it is a "static" subroutine-threaded forth which lacks the ability to define new immediate words and it has some special-case syntax for string constants and the like. I do have a quick-start manual available: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBasics.md https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBas...
  - shoo 14y ago
    Thanks for sharing your VM & games -- I've been reading through the docs & source and finding them both interesting & inspirational.
dkersten 14y ago
I took a look at the sample games and the code looks.. interesting, though I admit I understood close to none of it ;-) Though I understand the constructs (I played with Forth and Factor in the past), I find it hard to keep a mental model of the stack in my head. I do have a soft spot for concatenative languages though so I love seeing stuff like this - great work!

sehugg 14y ago

Looks pretty neat! I've been thinking of using FORTH in the same way; I'll be really interested to read through your sample games. (I played around with GraFORTH on the Apple ][ back in the day, and I remember it was wicked fast, and kinda fun)

RodgerTheGreat 14y ago
Thanks! There's a few things about my dialect of Forth that are unusual if you've worked with Forth before, mainly just the fact that it is a "static" subroutine-threaded forth which lacks the ability to define new immediate words and it has some special-case syntax for string constants and the like. I do have a quick-start manual available: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBasics.md https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/docs/makoBas...
- shoo 14y ago
  Thanks for sharing your VM & games -- I've been reading through the docs & source and finding them both interesting & inspirational.

dkersten 14y ago

I took a look at the sample games and the code looks.. interesting, though I admit I understood close to none of it ;-) Though I understand the constructs (I played with Forth and Factor in the past), I find it hard to keep a mental model of the stack in my head. I do have a soft spot for concatenative languages though so I love seeing stuff like this - great work!