Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2024 Poal.co

1.4K

I've been reading about Forth and found this, an interesting trip through history and other languages to explain what Forth was for and why it works the way it does (tl; dr: it's stack based, reverse-polish notation, so instead of (1+2)*(3+4) you do 1 2 + 3 4 + * but that's just the surface).

"Compiling took 30 minutes...you got one shot per day" -- Chuck Moore, Forth, the Early years

It's difficult to imagine now, but changing parameters for a program, re-compiling it, and running it again could take a day (assuming you didn't make any mistakes).

"Moore's programming career began in the late 1950s at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory with programs to compute ephemerides, orbital elements, satellite station positions, etc. His source code filled two card trays. To minimize recompiling this large program, he developed a simple interpreter to read cards controlling the program. This enabled him to compose different equations for several satellites without recompiling..."

I've been reading about Forth and found this, an interesting trip through history and other languages to explain what Forth was for and why it works the way it does (tl; dr: it's stack based, reverse-polish notation, so instead of (1+2)*(3+4) you do 1 2 + 3 4 + * but that's just the surface). > "Compiling took 30 minutes...you got one shot per day" -- Chuck Moore, Forth, the Early years > > It's difficult to imagine now, but changing parameters for a program, re-compiling it, and running it again could take a day (assuming you didn't make any mistakes). > > "Moore's programming career began in the late 1950s at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory with programs to compute ephemerides, orbital elements, satellite station positions, etc. His source code filled two card trays. To minimize recompiling this large program, he developed a simple interpreter to read cards controlling the program. This enabled him to compose different equations for several satellites without recompiling..."

(post is archived)

[–] • 1 pt

Forth is an awesome language. I don't get to use it very often but it's pretty slick. Get GnuForth or get SwiftForth from forth.com.