The “8th” Programming Language | Hacker News Reader

The “8th” Programming Language

8th-dev.com

15 pointsi_feel_great11 comments

I always wanted to try Forth, but GForth, the only accessible Forth, looks a bit unloved.

But this thing looks rather good. Not open source, but for what it does, $199/year isn't bad.

Edit: $199/year for the commercial version. Non-commercial is free.

I'd built a device with an MSP430 and have been meaning to try CamelForth on it instead of using my own C code.

I'd be curious to try something else for easier testing at a higher level or even figure out how to run the 8086 in a virtual machine..

>> but GForth, the only accessible Forth, looks a bit unloved.

With something as stable as Forth, I'm not sure what kind of activity would indicate a project is active enough unless it is adapting to new or highly unstable architectures?

The last time I had a serious look at GForth, it lacked libraries that I needed for my own development needs at the time: http-client, sqlite/postgres, xml/json, gui etc. It only seemed to cater just to embedded folks. Pity, I actually like the way development is done in Forth.

> Not open source

Deal-breaker for me.

From the faq (http://8th-dev.com/faq.html):

q) Are there any restrictions on who can use 8th?

a) Yes. Due to Israeli export laws, residents of the following countries may neither use nor purchase 8th: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Palestinian Authority, Sudan, and Syria.

WTF! This is the very deal-breaker for me...

Either if these are dealbreakers for me but this crap is just weird. Is that more common; last week we had that German bigot with his scientific software and now this...

I think there's a big difference between being restricted by national laws and deciding to personally exclude countries.

I agree, but it is still not very good. And in some countries you cannot really leave, Israel is not one of those so in some ways this is a personal choice of the author.

Welcome to the birth of the ethnic programming languages

This looks worse than badly written PHP.

The about page says: http://8th-dev.com/about8th.html

>As mentioned at the top of this page, Ron had written a Forth-based language called Reva Forth. The word “reva” in Hebrew (רבע) means “one-fourth” and Reva is also “one Forth”. Since we were working on a second-generation of Reva, we decided to divide 1/4 by 2, giving 1/8, or in other words: 8th

So it seems to be a Forth dialect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com