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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2024 19:32:05 +0100
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On 29/03/2024 17:02, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 08:44:54 -0700
> John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 09:55:33 -0000 (UTC)
>> Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:
>>
>>> My rule of thimb is that a scripting language is one whereby the
>>> source code can be run immediately by the interpreter, eg perl,
>>> python, regardless of what happens internally. A full fledged
>>> programming language is one that requires a compile/debug/link step
>>> first with the compiler and runtime (if required) being seperate. eg
>>> Java, C
>>
>> By *that* logic, even Lisp and Forth don't count as "full-fledged
>> programming languages" o_O Johanne's definition of a "scripting
> 
> As a counter point, good luck writing a device driver in lisp. Forth maybe,
> no idea.
> 

"Open Firmware" is an attempt to have device drivers for PCI cards (and 
other hardware) included in flash on the cards, in a processor and 
platform independent way.  It uses Forth - so the device drivers are 
provided as Forth source code or byte-compiled Forth, and can then be 
executed with a simple Forth VM on the target system.  They can also be 
JIT compiled for the target.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware>

It didn't really take off very well, but certainly people have written 
device drivers in Forth.