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So we had quite a deluge of Forth options recently :), not that I am complaining. As someone who doesn't use Forth much, which one is used the most? This one f

So we had quite a deluge of Forth options recently :), not that I am complaining. As someone who doesn't use Forth much, which one is used the most? This one for example looks like well rounded and user friendly option. Would anyone care to comment about this?

nickcw 8mo ago
Gforth is free and well rounded so I'd recommend that if you want to experiment with Forth. It is not very fast though, SwiftForth with optimised subroutine threading will be a lot faster. I haven't tried SwiftForth though as you have to pay for it and it is x86 only.
astrobe_ 8mo ago
This is made by the company the inventor of the language created. Then he left it because Forth, inc. needed the language to be standardized, which wasn't his idea of Forth and, his point of view is that he solved the software problems and what was left was solving the hardware problems, so he moved to working on stack-based processors. Swift Forth is literally a professional Forth and is well regarded. The other often recommend Forth is the FOSS GForth. They are good for starting because they are popular and standard, so you'll find help easily. Other "smaller" Forth are often non-standard dialects and are more-or-less mature experiments.
tosh 8mo ago
gForth [0] is great for getting started if you are working with specific hardware (e.g. microcontrollers) it depends on which forth dialects are available but for the raspberry pico and pico 2 I recently found zeptoforth [1] or you know you can always bootstrap your own :) [0] https://gforth.org https://gforth.org [1] https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth
stevekemp 8mo ago
I suspect there isn't a single "most popular" FORTH, instead there are a million niche-specific implementations. After all half the fun of using the language is writing your own interpreter, and it's very easy to do on constrained hardware/systems.
az09mugen 8mo ago
I had the same feeling, so I began to read https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/1-forth-stacks-dictionary/ https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/1-forth-stacks-dictiona... with gforth installed with apt. And made few exercises to manipulate the stack with some words and get a grasp on it. Now I saw how it works, I came back to my imperative languages and won't come back to it. IMO my skills in forth are not really enough to see the distinction between any implementation of forth, so the first one I stumbled upon was ok.

nickcw 8mo ago

Gforth is free and well rounded so I'd recommend that if you want to experiment with Forth. It is not very fast though, SwiftForth with optimised subroutine threading will be a lot faster. I haven't tried SwiftForth though as you have to pay for it and it is x86 only.

astrobe_ 8mo ago

This is made by the company the inventor of the language created. Then he left it because Forth, inc. needed the language to be standardized, which wasn't his idea of Forth and, his point of view is that he solved the software problems and what was left was solving the hardware problems, so he moved to working on stack-based processors. Swift Forth is literally a professional Forth and is well regarded. The other often recommend Forth is the FOSS GForth. They are good for starting because they are popular and standard, so you'll find help easily. Other "smaller" Forth are often non-standard dialects and are more-or-less mature experiments.

tosh 8mo ago

gForth [0] is great for getting started if you are working with specific hardware (e.g. microcontrollers) it depends on which forth dialects are available but for the raspberry pico and pico 2 I recently found zeptoforth [1] or you know you can always bootstrap your own :) [0] https://gforth.org https://gforth.org [1] https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth

stevekemp 8mo ago

I suspect there isn't a single "most popular" FORTH, instead there are a million niche-specific implementations. After all half the fun of using the language is writing your own interpreter, and it's very easy to do on constrained hardware/systems.

az09mugen 8mo ago

I had the same feeling, so I began to read https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/1-forth-stacks-dictionary/ https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/1-forth-stacks-dictiona... with gforth installed with apt. And made few exercises to manipulate the stack with some words and get a grasp on it. Now I saw how it works, I came back to my imperative languages and won't come back to it. IMO my skills in forth are not really enough to see the distinction between any implementation of forth, so the first one I stumbled upon was ok.