Comment by d3nit

13 days ago

From the title alone I tought it will be another FORTH interpreter implementation article, but I was happy to see someone actually using it for anything besides proving their interpreter with a Fibonacci calculation.

Yep, given that implementing Forth is so easy (easier even than implementing Lisp) pretty soon nearly every Forth programmer decides to take their turn doing it themselves.

  • I suspect, for many, that implementing a forth is more interesting than using a forth.

    Once you start writing really complex programs the system gets painful and hard. But trivial things are easy, and the consistency is so appealing.

    • It is the bootstrap that makes it interesting.

      Creating the required primitives in Assembly, and then the remaining userspace out from them.

      Afterwards it is programming like most languages.

      I have done it with Lisps though.

      Also on 8 bit home computers it provided the feeling to be coding close to Assembly while being close enough to BASIC as high level language.

  • Which reminds me that its time to dust off my old FORTH and make a proper calculator out of it.