
Retro: A Modern, Pragmatic Forth - UkiahSmith
http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html
======
muriarte
The link [http://forth.works/book.html](http://forth.works/book.html) is
broken. Maybe the correct link is:
[http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html](http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html)

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new4thaccount
Another modern Forth that has a cross-compiler to make Windows, Linux, Mac,
Android, Raspberry Pi, and iPhone executables is 8th.

[https://8th-dev.com/](https://8th-dev.com/)

It comes bundled with the C++ based JUCE GUI framework, SQLite, ODBC,
encrypted binaries, JSON support, and a lot of support for other things that
you typically don't see in a tool written by one person. The more expensive
licenses come with AWS and automotive Linux support, so nifty for this area.

Sadly, it is closed source and commercial (although you can get source with an
enterprise license I think). On the plus side, it is really cheap (there is a
free version too I believe) and the main developer seems to add user requested
features and fix bug reports very quickly.

I obviously wouldn't write a production system in it (although I'm sure you
could), but I wouldn't mind having a fun REPL based language to write simple
and easy to distribute cross-platform desktop apps.

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jimnutt
It's interesting (at least to me) because it's different from anything else
out there. The way it runs, the way it is compiled and the language itself are
nearly unique. It's also easy to bootstrap on very small machines and fairly
easy to implement. It's the light saber of programming languages, "a more
elegant language for a more elegant time". But then, that could just be the
nostalgia talking...

~~~
narcindin
What is the culture here on correcting wrong star wars quotes?

"An elegant weapon for a more _civilized_ age"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Polite pedantry is generally okay here. If done well and including a source,
it may even get a bunch of upvotes (a somewhat objective, though imperfect,
metric of cultural acceptance).

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fouc
Retro has been in development for 2 decades and has gone through quite a few
changes in that time. It is inspired by Chuck Moore's forth and avoids the
mistakes of the ANSI standard.

It is the forth of choice for any serious forth developer.

~~~
astrobe_
> It is inspired by Chuck Moore's forth

Which one? Because Retro and ColorForth seem light-years apart to me.

~~~
yiyus
ColorForth is light-years apart from everything.

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burlesona
I’m not too familiar with Forth, but I see posts about it and variants like
this on HN from time to time.

High-level, what makes Forth interesting? What are it’s major strengths and
weaknesses?

~~~
rwmj
A long time ago I wrote a tutorial for FORTH. It's in two parts, a part
written in i386 assembly:
[https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...](https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.S)

followed by a part written in FORTH:
[https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...](https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.f)

It builds gradually from asm primitives into a somewhat sophisticated language
with features like exceptions, function inlining and a decompiler.

The major strength, probably unique amongst programming languages, is that you
can keep the entire system in your head (by "system", I mean both language and
the simple operating system that it implements). The downside is that the code
is write-only.

~~~
4e1a
I just wanted to say "Thank You!" For jonesforth. I don't know how many times
i've read it. It's probably what made everything "click" for me, so "thanx"

