[Noisebridge-discuss] Forth programming?

[Aleksandr Milewski]

Jacob Appelbaum wrote:

> Awesome! It seems like it should be pretty easy to make a FORTH machine
> on a micro-controller. Perhaps some kind of embedded FORTH console for a
> 3d printer or something? I'm not really sure if that's something that
> would be useful but it seems like a good application. It would make
> interfacing with a device pretty simple but perhaps too simple...

Wow, read some of the history of FORTH... It was widely used in robotics 
for a long time, and there have been a number of dedicated 
microcontrollers over the years, including one that was famously 
demonstrated mounted in a picture frame with a solar cell (and this was 
in the late 80s).

IIRC, the 68k had a single instruction for the inner loop of a FORTH, 
uhh, interpreter? ("Meta-compiler" was the term in vogue back in the day)

Also... Open Firmware (Sun, PPC Macs) is FORTH.

I have a soft spot for FORTH as it was the first programming language I 
learned, and my dad had a small software company called The Software 
Works that sold FORTH for CP/M and NorthStar DOS systems.

I think that the canonical text on FORTH back in the day was Leo 
Brodie's book "Discover FORTH"

-Zandr