[rasur]

I 'learned' Forth decades ago (on a Sinclair ZX81, so essentially a quite horrible experience), and tripped over it again recently.. ending up ploughing through the books "Thinking Forth" and (currently) "Starting Forth" both of which are extremely interesting and so very very different to what we use these days. It very much fits into that saying "A language that doesn't change how your think about programming, isn't worth knowing". I realise now just how shallow an understanding of Forth I had as a teen, back in the day ;)

But I think the win here - these days - for Forth is in things like "running on small embedded devices".. I'm looking with interest at some of the activity around say Arduinos and am thinking that Forth is a rather nice fit for that sort of system. Have bought a kit, and am looking forwards to some non-work quality time to play further :)

(The Books I meantion can be found online very easily, but you'll forgive them for being written back in a time when systems were _simpler_ to grok ;) )

[_0ffh]

> I think the win here - these days - for Forth is in things like "running on small embedded devices"

In principle that's not a bad idea, it's just that you're at least 40 years late to the party. FORTH was and propably is used in embedded systems for most of it's existence. Often simply with a minimal text console over UART, that being your "way in". Once you've got that going you can start builing up your system from the inside.

[rasur]

Being late to the party is the story of my life, but fwiw, I was aware that FORTH was used a lot in this kind of use-case ;)

[rwmj]

Artic Forth? I had a lot of fun with that. https://worldofspectrum.net/item/0031896/

[rasur]

I think it was, actually, yes. Thanks for the reminder!

[agumonkey]

Maybe some stuff are hard to perceive as a teen though. I used turbopascal, had a book, but I could't foresee the value of some types or ideas. Forth can be even more alien in a way.