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Comment by throwaway17_17 | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard of Wizard’s Bane, but that name being associated with why someone would learn Forth made me curious. So I search and find a result that says ‘where magic is volatile and he tames it with Forth.’

So, is the book ‘Wizard’s Bane’ actually focused on using Forth (or some ersatz programming language concept) to do magic? If so, that basically describes a huge part of an hypothetical RPG I’ve been designing on paper since college. Also, would you recommend the book to a fan of genre fiction?

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Wizard's Bane is the first book of the Wizardary Compiled series by Rick Cook.

At one time, it was in the Baen Free Library ( https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012 ) but it appears to have gone back to a regular "you buy it book". https://www.baen.com/wizard-s-bane.html

However, if you dig in Wayback, you can find the Free Library of old - https://web.archive.org/web/20050828182931/http://www.baen.c... and the first two (IMHO the best two) books. Its old school frame stuff to get it to the screen (which works) and linkable via going to the frameless version ( https://web.archive.org/web/20050903172506fw_/http://www.bae... )

The first 3 books can be found as one volume on Kindle https://www.amazon.com/Wiz-Wizardry-combo-volumes-Book-ebook...

As to recommending the book (and series)? Yes. The first three are good. Book 4 is... getting weird and 5 is weird.

Yes, "programming nerd's ability at programming makes him an incredible actual wizard in FantasyLand" is the book. I would recommend it!

Thanks, that description checks a whole bunch of my-favorite-things boxes.

No it only superficialily mentions Forth and its characteristics. But it's very cool!

I should have edited my comment to say programming language in general instead of forth specifically. It’s more the idea of using programming to do/control magic that I think sounds like a great premise.

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