Bill Coderre wheezed these wise words:
> None of this directly addresses FORTH being FUN, but I am guessing that
> FORTH is sort of the contrapositive (is that the right word?), in that you
> start at a low-level, and stay there. (Of course, my experience with FORTH
> is non-existent, so feel free to call me uninformed.)
What makes Forth fun, for me and most of the programmers I know who
use (or have used) Forth, is the ease with which you can build new
tools. Perhaps Leo Brodie's "Thinking Forth" is the Forth answer to
Paul Graham's "On Lisp"?
There are many characterstics that we can use to distinguish families
of languages, or entire classes. My favourite characteristic is the
"one world" approach used by Lisp, Forth, Smalltalk, and no doubt many
others (APL?). All interactive "one world" languages with incremental
compilers appeal to me.
Curiously, I've never liked batch oriented Forth compilers, except for
the meta compilers used to build Forth systems. Yep, another feature
of these systems is that they can build themselves, just like in the
last chapter of SICP. Some Forth systems even have fast load modules!
Now, meta compilers are serious fun. ;) Check out the Cassidy Forth
meta compiler...
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