Hacker News Reader

Comment by LessDmesg | Hacker News Reader

Then how come no real software has been written in this wonderful language? Not even a decent text editor, let alone a browser or a game engine?

View on HN

Most of the software written in Forth runs on embedded systems, not user-facing ones.

OpenFirmware is based on forth, and was used instead of BIOS for Sun workstations, some Powermacs, and the OLPC, among other devices. On the OLPC it offers a nice debugging interface and educational opportunity.[0]

The Wikireader "wikipedia appliance" used forth for their testing harness during manufacturing, and it's possible to write your own applications for the device using it.[1]

Forth has been used for control software for a variety of aerospace applications.[2]

I have personally used Forth as an interactive testing environment for bringing up new hardware. In one case, I prototyped software for the power management chip in an embedded linux device.

I've also written games and programming environments in Forth, both for fun and for use in educational after-school programs I helped organize. For example, a logo environment[3,4] and a rewrite of Yar's Revenge[5,6].

Is any of this software "real"?

[0] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Open_Firmware

[1] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Wikireader-Adventures

[2] https://www.forth.com/resources/space-applications/

[3] http://johnearnest.github.io/Mako.js/?rom=Loko

[4] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/tree/master/demos/Loko

[5] http://johnearnest.github.io/Mako.js/?rom=Yar

[6] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako/blob/master/games/Yar/Ya...

Not to mention, 'LessDmesg, your statement on there not being a "decent text editor" written in Forth is absolutely unfounded. Arguably the best text editor of all time was written in Forth: the Canon Cat.

Created by Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh, only perhaps the most influential UI designer in the entire world.

I was recently pleased to discover that the Internet Archive even has a browser-based emulator for the Cat: https://archive.org/details/canoncat

Right? It's so cool!

Nope, some obscure embedded or toy stuff doesn't count as real software that matters to people. Even Haskell, bless its academic ivory-tower soul, has real-time video games, IDEs and neural networks, not to mention tons of websites, written in it. And Forth has what, some device drivers and hobby/learning stuff? Point amply proven, thank you.

Did you look at some of those links? Please don't confuse 'popularity' or user numbers as being the measurement of what is 'real software'. I'm sure anyone involved in any of the aerospace projects would argue the Forth software used matters a great deal and is very real!

A few more links to meditate on https://www.forth.com/resources/who-uses-forth/

You're kidding, right? There was a time when a good chunk of the world ran on Sun... even PowerMac was not such a small name until recently.

I'd like to see how well your video game runs when the software responsible for configuring and interfacing with your hardware and booting your OS is missing; tell me then how much that software doesn't matter. Have you ever tried to actually write any of this type of software that you're so casually dismissing as not "real"?

ps. Websites? Really?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight

I don't know, probably because it's not 'plug and play' with a swath of libraries and tooling like most popular languages.

Whether it's used or not wasn't really my point but it's hard to deny that such a simple syntax so close to the metal is quite amazing and elegant :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com