Forth: The Hacker’s Language • Hacker News Board

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#41

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #35

pjmlp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forth is the only one in which this is possible. Every other example I've seen always uses C for "low-level" access or a libraries. If you need to do that, then you won't win over embedded devs like me. Not really. https://www.mikroe.com/mikrobasic/ https://www.mikroe.com/mikropascal/ http://www.astrobe.com/default.htm http://www.adacore.com/gnatpro/embedded http://www.ptc.com/developer-tools/apexada http://www.ghs…

Is there any reason he would have heard of those? They're all pretty fringe, arguably moreso than Forth, for some of them. Some of these do look neat: I've had an interest in both Ada and Oberon, although I haven't been able to get over the verbosity and unpleasant syntax of either (it's not COBOL, or anything, but it's not nice). OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also…

> OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also has BASIC in the name...

For many years the Elektor magazine and a few other competing ones, had the listings of electronic stuff done in Assembly, Basic and Turbo Pascal.

Before Raspberry PI was a thing, many developers were using Basic STAMP.

https://www.parallax.com/catalog/microcontrollers/basic-stam...

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#42

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #40

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason he would have heard of those? They're all pretty fringe, arguably moreso than Forth, for some of them. Some of these do look neat: I've had an interest in both Ada and Oberon, although I haven't been able to get over the verbosity and unpleasant syntax of either (it's not COBOL, or anything, but it's not nice). OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also…

Ada is not fringe. It's used by many large companies, although less and less these for new projects these days. There are some huge Ada codebases being maintained in industry, particularly in the aviation industry.

Actually, I might get the wrong picture but from FOSDEM talks and high integrity conferences programms, I get the opposite view.

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#43

Post by junke » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 3:50 PM UTC

shortsightedsid wrote: post #8

I'm a embedded software dev and write code all day in C. Sure enough forth comes up in conversations once in a while as does other ideas like Python, JS, Lua etc.. Of all the alternatives to C, Forth is the only one which groks hardware. This is particularly important for embedded development. Any realistic alternative to C must understand interrupts, memory mapped registers etc.. Forth is the only one in which this…

What is an embedded dev's view of Ada, by the way? (out of sheer curiosity)

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#44

Post by s-macke » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

One of the most complex games Starflight of the 80th's is written in Forth. I had a lot of fun decompiling it.

https://github.com/s-macke/starflight-reverse

It turns out to be very portable because the assembler code is only about 1000-2000 lines. The rest is implemented in Forth itself. They use indirect threading to produce very dense code. They kept even most of the debugging symbols inside the code and kept the forth interpreter itself in the code.

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#45

Post by throwaway7645 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #36

throwaway7645 wrote: post #30

There is a decent amount of Forth publications out there, but nothing that really takes you from A->Z in building your own Forth based off of Assembly or C. JonesForth helped me conceptually understand parts of Forth, but there is a lot missing there for me to be able to start from scratch. I would pay $ for a real book in the vein of "Land of Lisp" that shows you how to build a Forth compiler/editor and how to exten…

tLoL doesn't really do that. I think you might be thinking of Build Your Own Lisp (And Learn C), another excellent book.

No I'm thinking of LoL, but I meant the irreverence and comical simplicity like Leo Brodie's Starting Forth, but also focusing on how to write one from scratch (you are correct LoL doesn't do this).

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#46

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #40

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason he would have heard of those? They're all pretty fringe, arguably moreso than Forth, for some of them. Some of these do look neat: I've had an interest in both Ada and Oberon, although I haven't been able to get over the verbosity and unpleasant syntax of either (it's not COBOL, or anything, but it's not nice). OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also…

Ada is not fringe. It's used by many large companies, although less and less these for new projects these days. There are some huge Ada codebases being maintained in industry, particularly in the aviation industry.

The same can be said of Lisp and Forth. Would you call them fringe?

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#47

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #41

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason he would have heard of those? They're all pretty fringe, arguably moreso than Forth, for some of them. Some of these do look neat: I've had an interest in both Ada and Oberon, although I haven't been able to get over the verbosity and unpleasant syntax of either (it's not COBOL, or anything, but it's not nice). OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also…

> OTOH, I am immediately suspicious of any product that claims it's professional and also has BASIC in the name... For many years the Elektor magazine and a few other competing ones, had the listings of electronic stuff done in Assembly, Basic and Turbo Pascal. Before Raspberry PI was a thing, many developers were using Basic STAMP. https://www.parallax.com/catalog/microcontrollers/basic-stam...

I'm aware, but... urgh. Yuck. I don't think BASIC causes brain damage, but I also don't think it's a very nice thing to work in.

Although I suppose it does depend on the dialect, to an extent...

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#48

Post by falcolas » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

usernam wrote: post #24

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As multiple people have pointed out, GreenArray chips are basically TIS-100 IRL, but in Forth. Right down to the quirky design.

Never heard of TIS-100 (you mean http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ ?)

Worth playing; if you enjoy programming challenges within limited environments, you would be hard pressed to find better games than the Zachtronics set of games.

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#49

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:55 PM UTC

s-macke wrote: post #44

One of the most complex games Starflight of the 80th's is written in Forth. I had a lot of fun decompiling it. https://github.com/s-macke/starflight-reverse It turns out to be very portable because the assembler code is only about 1000-2000 lines. The rest is implemented in Forth itself. They use indirect threading to produce very dense code. They kept even most of the debugging symbols inside the code and kept the f…

Neat. Rather akin to Infocom's Z-machine (or to the newer Glulx), although less task-specific.

Re: Forth: The Hacker’s Language

#50

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #4

I came to Forth-like languages via PostScript, which has the advantage of a huge built-in graphics library. It very naturally introduces concepts like higher order operations, code as data and data as code.

Can you reccomend any books on PS?