"focus on applications instead of refining the tool"

It's true. How many times have we seen someone share their reimplementation of a FORTH like interpreter? Far fewer times than we've seen people write and share FORTH applications. Why that is, I'll leave as a question for the reader.

We know FORTH works beautifully as an small interpreter. There's no need to keep rewriting it except as an educational exercise. But would any disagree that there is a real need for more applications to be written and shared if the brilliance of FORTH is ever to be truly realized by more than a small group of people? Not necesarily to create some sort of silly "App Store" culture but just to show what can be done with the language. Proof of concept.