> In fact, I've even heard some Forth fans themselves say that the point of using Forth is to write yourself something as quickly as possible that lets you program in a higher level language.

That was the main point for someone I know: Forth was how they'd bootstrap a new system to be useful in a few days.

I don't think they do this anymore. This mattered more in say the 1980s when truly new personal computer hardware was coming on the market fairly frequently.