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The J1 Forth CPU

excamera.com

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Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#3

Post by smoyer »

I wrote a huge amount of Forth (polyForth) in the '90s and was always fascinated by the simple definition of a Forth machine. When implemented on many uProcessors, you only used a small subset of the available assembly language instructions. Even back then, people were building custom CPUs to optimize Forth's execution speed.

Kudos!

Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#4

Post by MCRed »

I loved Forth as a kid, I thought it was a great language to learn on.

I think that it's much better than BASIC for small projects and I would love to see someone make an arduino or BASIC STAMP type product (maybe kickstarter it?) with a little bit of an ecosystem.

I think a lot of people who are hardware focused but need to do some software would benefit, and software people who want to get into hardware would benefit too.

Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#5

Post by protomyth »

MCRed wrote: post #4

I loved Forth as a kid, I thought it was a great language to learn on. I think that it's much better than BASIC for small projects and I would love to see someone make an arduino or BASIC STAMP type product (maybe kickstarter it?) with a little bit of an ecosystem. I think a lot of people who are hardware focused but need to do some software would benefit, and software people who want to get into hardware would benef…

Forth's great strength over BASIC was in how you broke down a problem. It reward adding simple words that did simple things that could be combined into complex behavior. BASIC really didn't send you down that road. I agree it is a find language to learn.

[edit: I should say I did prefer PostScript to Forth as stack languages go, plus the the PostScript Blue Book was a lot of fun http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/sdk/sample/... ]

Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#6

Post by malkia »

I was amazed when my best friend wrote a full game in Forth while he was still in high-school. I couldn't do it, and I'm still puzzled about it :)

Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#7

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

MCRed wrote: post #4

I loved Forth as a kid, I thought it was a great language to learn on. I think that it's much better than BASIC for small projects and I would love to see someone make an arduino or BASIC STAMP type product (maybe kickstarter it?) with a little bit of an ecosystem. I think a lot of people who are hardware focused but need to do some software would benefit, and software people who want to get into hardware would benef…

Maybe 4e4th on the MSP430 Launchpad would suit your needs: http://www.somersetweb.com/4E4th/EN.html

Re: The J1 Forth CPU

#8

Post by jamesbowman »

MCRed wrote: post #4

I loved Forth as a kid, I thought it was a great language to learn on. I think that it's much better than BASIC for small projects and I would love to see someone make an arduino or BASIC STAMP type product (maybe kickstarter it?) with a little bit of an ecosystem. I think a lot of people who are hardware focused but need to do some software would benefit, and software people who want to get into hardware would benef…

I have something along those lines in progress now... if you mail me at the address on this page:

http://excamera.com/sphinx/index.html

I will let you know when it launches.

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