this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
45 points (97.9% liked)

Programming

17352 readers
341 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Forth, its history and the computer science ideas which form its foundations explained in a light and humorous style sprinkled with links to interesting resources on the web.

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Forth is a neat little language. Writing a compiler for it is very easy, and yet it isn't too terrible to write as a user. That is a tough balance to strike.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Emphasis on the "little". You can get a working Forth environment into <5K. That's why they used to use it to write BIOSen. I'm surprised you don't hear more about it in embedded spaces today—seems like it would be ideal for that use case.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do I need to understand lambda calculus to get the most out of this article? I made it to combinators and I’m a bit lost. Should I just read the mentioned “to mock a mockingbird”?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

lambda calculus

I wouldn't say so. I'd say you can try quickly skimming through the theoretical explanation and instead reading the code snippets provided. I've got a feeling that you're already familiar with the concept and can figure out the code - it's just the math behind it which can read too intense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't understand λ calculus, but I was able to make it through the article. It gets less theoretical and more about how Forth works, why it was designed the way it is, and so on. It was a great read!

load more comments
view more: next ›