Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Tue 12th Nov 2002 20:39 UTC, submitted by bland est
Forth has been a recognized programming language since the 1970's. ColorForth is a redesign of this classic language for the 21st century. It also draws upon a 20-year evolution of minimal instruction-set microprocessors. Now implemented on modern PCs, it runs stand-alone without an operating system. Applications are recompiled from source with a simple optimizing compiler.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
"...As for functionality, I've seen muli-user, multi-process systems built with it that rival any current OS - all on a lowly 8085 clone with 64k of RAM..."
I don't think this is comparable to modern Unix functionality.
The philosophy of Forth is not to develop pluggable, do-all-modules (like the c++-religion mandates), which require massive development effort themselves, but rather to do only one job well and easily.
This is similar to XP, which AFAIK states you should refactor your code every now and again. In Forth this rewriting is possible, because it's (a) simple syntax (b) interactive.
Probably these old multi-user systems had only limited functionality, but that's all you need anyway!
Instead of, say, several abstraction layers/libraries you get to do what want _directly_, which means, though, you have to plan a lot initially. That why any idiot can write (sucking bad) Java, but to write Forth you need to think _before_ coding.