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Forth is cool, and might make for a BASIC replacement, but it is a terrible "systems programming" language. You will still need some kind of lower level access
by StillBored 12y ago
Forth is cool, and might make for a BASIC replacement, but it is a terrible "systems programming" language. You will still need some kind of lower level access mechanism. The alternative is to extend forth with a ton of platform specific words. That is the route most of the early BASIC's took as well, so it might not be to bad.
(I say this as someone who spent a year of my professional life writing open firmware code. Which for those that don't know, is the crazy idea of creating cross platform firmware in forth.)
- abecedarius 12y agoHuh. I worked at FORTH, Inc. a little in the 80s and would've said it's fine for systems programming: use the assembler vocabulary. I can see running into limits without that, but with it it's better than a macro assembler. But I've never tried Open Firmware beyond hello-world.