4 ms·

I hope there will come time for Forth to get more attention, or dare I say, to stop being so underrated. It is so great tool, even just for stretching your bra

by kunley 2y ago

I hope there will come time for Forth to get more attention, or dare I say, to stop being so underrated. It is so great tool, even just for stretching your brain cells..

ink_13 2y ago
Too bad I no longer have my HONK FORTH IF LOVE THEN bumper sticker
- colonwqbang 2y ago
  Shouldn't it be "forth love if honk then"? Or am I not getting the joke.
  - rlonstein 2y ago
    I remember it as, "YOU FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN"
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    This link I found seems to corroborate http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/forth_love_if_h.html http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/forth_love_if_h... but the Wayback Machine is down so I can't check.
  - fuzztester 2y ago
    Ask Don Hopkins: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - ink_13 2y ago
    On reflection I think you are correct. Admittedly I have not done anything with Forth in quite some time.
packetlost 2y ago
I doubt it ever will. There's still pockets on the internet and a few tireless maintainers, but I doubt it'll ever see much of a resurgence. It's just too different. Maybe during "bring-up" of embedded systems, but even that I think is mostly on the way out sadly.
whobre 2y ago
That time was the 1980s. After 1995 or so, Forth sadly started to disappear.
sph 2y ago
I recently posted a paper on the Permacomputing Aesthetic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818119) which argues there is a counter current of developers that want to go against the maximalist world of computing and rediscover programming as art on constrained systems. In this world, where we do not idolize the large teams of code monkeys, languages like Forth can see a resurgence. Forth is a bad language for a team of people of dubious and different skillset, but in the hands of a single person it is the most moldable environment, even moreso than Lisp. I have been designing some sort of "persistent" Forth OS, that boots into an interpreter and persists your defined words across sessions and reboots, so you can incrementally build your own personal computer from scratch.
- mepian 2y ago
  >even moreso than Lisp How exactly?
  - transfire 2y ago
    Probably because Lisp requires a GC. With Forth you have to write your code to fit a finite memory footprint.
    - mepian 2y ago
      >you have to write your code to fit a finite memory footprint This sounds like the opposite of having the more moldable environment.
      - sph 2y ago
        A bare metal Forth has access to your entire RAM. Perhaps that's what parent meant as "finite" memory.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Let's take Laxen and Perry's F83 implementation as an example. F83 implements an assembler, a memory hex dumper, an interpreter, a sort of bytecode compiler, a decompiler, a single-stepping source-level debugger, a screen editor (which could jump to the definition of any function and jump back and forth between source and documentation, and which tagged each screen of source code with the last edit date and author's initials), cooperative multitasking with thread-local data, a print spooler, and virtual memory. It can also compile programs into standalone executables, and in fact it's written in itself, so it can cross-compile itself for other architectures and operating systems; it supported CP/M-86, MS-DOS, and CP/M for the 68000. The Forth programming language it implements is low-level but relatively powerful; among other things, it includes structured control flow, Turing-complete compile-time macros, closures, pointers, and multiple return values. This is nothing unusual for a Lisp system, of course. What is different is that F83 is only about 2100 lines of code by my count. That's what makes it "more moldable" than a Lisp system with the same features, which would require around an order of magnitude more code. There are some major compromises made in pursuit of this level of minimality, though: no type-safety (not even to the extent of calling functions with the right number of arguments), no built-in structs (though you can build them with its macro system and closures), no bounds-checking on arrays, error-prone manual access to the virtual-memory system, no syntax, no stack-allocated named variables, etc.
codr7 2y ago
I don't see standard Forth going anywhere; same for Common Lisp, Scheme & Smalltalk. They had a good run, and they're still fun to play around with and useful for teaching and stealing ideas from. But the world has moved on in too many ways. There's still a lot of ground to explore between Forth and Lisp though, and plenty of modern ideas to steal from scripting languages.
- vindarel 2y ago
  Common Lisp is still kicking ;) (not its standard sure)
  - codr7 2y ago
    I don't know about kicking, it's not exactly thriving. I prefer Lisp for tricky problem solving, but it's unfortunately a no go professionally outside of prototyping ideas.
    - vindarel 2y ago
      still, some use it professionally. And pick it as first choice. Like, is CL all the rage in quantum computing? https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ for some, prototyping goes to production: https://blog.funcall.org/lisp%20psychoacoustics/2024/05/01/worlds-loudest-lisp-program/ https://blog.funcall.org/lisp%20psychoacoustics/2024/05/01/w... (this year example) Thriving as recognized by the general public, no, but do many implementations improve and are libraries released for practical matters? Yes.

by kunley 2y ago

I hope there will come time for Forth to get more attention, or dare I say, to stop being so underrated. It is so great tool, even just for stretching your brain cells..

ink_13 2y ago

Too bad I no longer have my HONK FORTH IF LOVE THEN bumper sticker

colonwqbang 2y ago
Shouldn't it be "forth love if honk then"? Or am I not getting the joke.
- rlonstein 2y ago
  I remember it as, "YOU FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN"
- Y_Y 2y ago
  This link I found seems to corroborate http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/forth_love_if_h.html http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/09/forth_love_if_h... but the Wayback Machine is down so I can't check.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  Ask Don Hopkins: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ink_13 2y ago
  On reflection I think you are correct. Admittedly I have not done anything with Forth in quite some time.

packetlost 2y ago

I doubt it ever will. There's still pockets on the internet and a few tireless maintainers, but I doubt it'll ever see much of a resurgence. It's just too different. Maybe during "bring-up" of embedded systems, but even that I think is mostly on the way out sadly.

whobre 2y ago

That time was the 1980s. After 1995 or so, Forth sadly started to disappear.

sph 2y ago

I recently posted a paper on the Permacomputing Aesthetic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41818119) which argues there is a counter current of developers that want to go against the maximalist world of computing and rediscover programming as art on constrained systems. In this world, where we do not idolize the large teams of code monkeys, languages like Forth can see a resurgence. Forth is a bad language for a team of people of dubious and different skillset, but in the hands of a single person it is the most moldable environment, even moreso than Lisp. I have been designing some sort of "persistent" Forth OS, that boots into an interpreter and persists your defined words across sessions and reboots, so you can incrementally build your own personal computer from scratch.

mepian 2y ago
>even moreso than Lisp How exactly?
- transfire 2y ago
  Probably because Lisp requires a GC. With Forth you have to write your code to fit a finite memory footprint.
  - mepian 2y ago
    >you have to write your code to fit a finite memory footprint This sounds like the opposite of having the more moldable environment.
    - sph 2y ago
      A bare metal Forth has access to your entire RAM. Perhaps that's what parent meant as "finite" memory.
- kragen 2y ago
  Let's take Laxen and Perry's F83 implementation as an example. F83 implements an assembler, a memory hex dumper, an interpreter, a sort of bytecode compiler, a decompiler, a single-stepping source-level debugger, a screen editor (which could jump to the definition of any function and jump back and forth between source and documentation, and which tagged each screen of source code with the last edit date and author's initials), cooperative multitasking with thread-local data, a print spooler, and virtual memory. It can also compile programs into standalone executables, and in fact it's written in itself, so it can cross-compile itself for other architectures and operating systems; it supported CP/M-86, MS-DOS, and CP/M for the 68000. The Forth programming language it implements is low-level but relatively powerful; among other things, it includes structured control flow, Turing-complete compile-time macros, closures, pointers, and multiple return values. This is nothing unusual for a Lisp system, of course. What is different is that F83 is only about 2100 lines of code by my count. That's what makes it "more moldable" than a Lisp system with the same features, which would require around an order of magnitude more code. There are some major compromises made in pursuit of this level of minimality, though: no type-safety (not even to the extent of calling functions with the right number of arguments), no built-in structs (though you can build them with its macro system and closures), no bounds-checking on arrays, error-prone manual access to the virtual-memory system, no syntax, no stack-allocated named variables, etc.

codr7 2y ago

I don't see standard Forth going anywhere; same for Common Lisp, Scheme & Smalltalk. They had a good run, and they're still fun to play around with and useful for teaching and stealing ideas from. But the world has moved on in too many ways. There's still a lot of ground to explore between Forth and Lisp though, and plenty of modern ideas to steal from scripting languages.

vindarel 2y ago
Common Lisp is still kicking ;) (not its standard sure)
- codr7 2y ago
  I don't know about kicking, it's not exactly thriving. I prefer Lisp for tricky problem solving, but it's unfortunately a no go professionally outside of prototyping ideas.
  - vindarel 2y ago
    still, some use it professionally. And pick it as first choice. Like, is CL all the rage in quantum computing? https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ for some, prototyping goes to production: https://blog.funcall.org/lisp%20psychoacoustics/2024/05/01/worlds-loudest-lisp-program/ https://blog.funcall.org/lisp%20psychoacoustics/2024/05/01/w... (this year example) Thriving as recognized by the general public, no, but do many implementations improve and are libraries released for practical matters? Yes.