Interview With Baremetal OS' Ian Seyler
Linked by Conrad Voorsanger on Thu 2nd Jun 2011 16:28 UTC
Original OSNews Interviews OSNews sat down with Ian Seyler, the Founder and Lead Programmer at Return Infinity, the maker and sponsor of Baremetal OS, a 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers written entirely in Assembly. Editor's note: We'd love to do similar interviews with the people behind other alternative or hobby OS projects. If there's a project that you'd like to learn more about, let us know.
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RE[4]: Why not in Forth?
by Zbigniew on Sat 4th Jun 2011 21:13 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Why not in Forth?"
Zbigniew
Member since:
2008-08-28

"Forth compiled code is compact. Forth applications require less memory than their equivalent assembly-language programs and consume less power (important for hand-helds and portable gadgets!)"

Something doesn't seem right about this. Either forth is emulating a more compact byte code than x86, or it's executing native x86 code. I don't understand how it can be both smaller and as efficient as assembly, can you elaborate?

But while reading "Starting Forth" you surely noticed, where I copy the above from? ;)
I understand that statement, that using Forth words, instead of coding in assembly, usually overall size of your code is smaller, when programming in Forth. I think, it depends on quality of macroassembler you can use, quality of Forth compiler, which you're comparing to - and, of course, on your skills both as assembler- and Forth-coder.

Portability is huge, however in my experience platform specific APIs hinder portability more so than the language itself. Does forth have a standard API for things like networking, name resolution, databases, threading, graphics, etc?

No. Actually, programming in Forth is rather "designing one's own problem-specific language". Forth is the basis. Then instead of using ready-available high-level function (which you'll find in langs like Python), you're designing your own higher-level language using Forth words.

I'm sure this is true for many cases. But what about compared against ruby, or python, C#, or even something like haskell?

The question is difficult to answer (at least for me) because I don't have the time to implement the same program in a dozen different languages to compare the relative difficulty.

Of course, it's not that easy to measure it. Since I'm Forth-newbie (learning it about year for now), you may be interested in asking these questions on comp.lang.forth, where you'll meet several experienced Forth-programmers, coding in Forth more than 20 years.

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