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by digitailor 4809 days ago
Woah thanks for that link, there could be some assembly worth salvaging there.

Currently working on an ARM forth-idea with some scheme-ideas. There's this nagging intuition I have that there's a symbiosis between Lisp atom/Forth word and S-expression/Forth dictionary.

I have to get something going pretty quickly so I can't get too pure about the idea, as I don't want to get bogged down in the necessary GC yet.

Thanks for your reply, it already made me more interested in Factor from an implementation standpoint, even if I wouldn't use it on x86.

1 comments

Isn't Factor (at some level of abstraction) basically Lisp/Scheme with more minimal syntax? It replaces prefix notation and parentheses with postfix notation and a stack. All the benefits Lisps get from minimal syntax, Factor gets too.
That's exactly what I'm thinking, but I haven't had time to stress-test the idea or find any precedent. And remember i'm talking about a ~36kilobtye forth, not this large-sized and resource-intensive kind of x86 forth that I don't understand the reason for.

Theoretically you would have the HLL incredibleness of a lisp with the low level genius of Forth. I asked some old timers if the idea made sense and they were silent in specifics but not discouraging. Which would indicate to me they think it is a huge learning opportunity for me one way or the other. Have you done any deeper analysis?