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Comment by dpflug | Hacker News Reader

Building a Forth could tighter your edit-test cycle.

I am fascinated by Forth, but every time I've tried to learn it I haven't really "got it". It's always felt very unwieldy to me.

But implementing Forth on my CPU, and getting proficient at using it, is definitely something I'd like to do at some point!

I don't know if I'm not creative enough but what I've read about Forth tells you about the stack, about how to make new words, push arguments and pop to print. But that's it, and I can't figure out how to get things done with those building blocks. There's the famous washing machine example but there's not much else about doing things with it.

It's something that many programming language tutorials miss: exploring the possibility space and teaching you the language's expressive power

Starting Forth: https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

Thinking Forth: http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/

In combination, very effective introduction to programming in Forth including how to go about combining those building blocks.

> I am fascinated by Forth, but every time I've tried to learn it I haven't really "got it".

Try reading Jonesforth, a literate Forth implementation in one x86 assembly file and one Forth file. You can read it top to bottom and it will explain how everything works step-by-step.

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/jonesforth-git-reposit...

Github mirror: https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth

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