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points by fallat 2 days ago | 0 comments
The standard library is lacking some really nice conveniences. I'm working on correcting this and teaching Forth as a "grassroots" language for people who want to go back to the joy of programming as an art. The 100rabbits folks have already done a lot of work around proliferating that idea but I want to work outside of the Uxn machine that they use. Mark my words, us programmers are not phased by AI stealing the joy of programming :) The day job business programming, sure. But that was only fun sometimes. Forth will continue to exercise our brains and work through logic and data flow problems - skills we can bring to guiding agents for the day job.
[–] isr 2 days ago
Have you considered factor? Its from the joy-inspired branch of the forth/concatenative family, but its a heavily underrated, batteries included language. Which has a bit of a smalltalk feel given its image-based deployment and the "live" nature of its tools (graphical repl, object inspectors, etc)
[–] MaxBarraclough 1 day ago
Factor looks like a more conventional language, with dynamic typing, automatic memory management, etc. It sounds quite far from Forth's roots as a compact assembly sequence that enables interpretation of a minimal language just barely atop the bare metal.

fallat said they were interested in teaching a 'grassroots' language. By that I think they mean something with a minimal core language and compact interpreter, so Forth seems like the better fit.

[–] fallat 1 day ago
Yep. You've nailed it
[–] vanderZwan 2 days ago
Since you're working on your own thing that may or may not be like a traditional Forth at all, and also mention Uxn, you might find some ideas in Ben Bridle's Bedrock worth stealing:

https://benbridle.com/projects/bedrock

In particular the reasoning for what he changed compared to Uxn might be insightful:

https://benbridle.com/articles/bedrock-differences-from-uxn

[–] MaxBarraclough 1 day ago
> Mark my words

We will also compile them, and reference their execution tokens from the dictionary.

[–] fallat 1 day ago
Hahahahaha, nice one!