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Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
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On 10/6/24 11:02 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Oct 2024 16:06:14 -0600, Louis Krupp wrote:
> 
>> GNU Forth... I don't know enough about it to have an opinion.
> 
> https://gforth.org/manual/Forth-is-written-in-Forth.html
> 
> Forth is an odd beast. There is a very small engine that has to be built
> for the processor in question to handle words.
> 
> https://github.com/forthy42/gforth/tree/master/engine
> 
> gcc can handle that since it is C code.


   The original Chuck Moore FORTH slightly pre-dates the
   i4004 chip.

   As a half-a-step above ASM the syntax is (sort of) more
   readable. The 'stack' approach to dealing with both
   commands and data could be implemented very simply
   (but you HAD to be fully aware of what was on the
   stack exactly where). FORTH also supports subroutines
   and you can make a lib of those.

   The interpreter can be VERY small - fit into a little
   old ROM chip. I think one company made CPUs with an
   inbuilt FORTH kernel. It is reported that the first
   language ported to the new 8088/8086 processors way
   back was FORTH.

   It was especially popular in the 70s/80s for minimal
   systems - especially for academia/space. If you had a
   telescope on a mountaintop in Chile and a 110 baud
   connection then you could still easily edit/test
   the control program from sunny Cal. I know an old
   astronomer - he is still fluent in FORTH.

   Modern chips/systems and 4/5-G or sat connections have
   kinda made FORTH redundant - but it may still have a
   place for some 'industrial' and remote-sense apps
   using power around that of an Arduino or less.

   Interpreters can be handy sometimes.

   Somewhere I've got a 'CPL' interpreter. CPL
   became BCPL which became 'B' which became 'C'.

   gFORTH is kind of a 'cheat' - just a translator
   into 'C'. What you want is a native interpreter.

   https://www.forth.org/compilers.html

   SOMEWHERE I came across a whole FORTH dev environment
   for Linux but accidentally deleted it.