Many people glorify the simplicity of Lisp as an interpreter, but Forth is similar and underappreciated. Sadly, the only code I've written in Forth is... PostScript. Yeah, PostScript is a dialect of Forth. As a child, I really was amused by the demo of GraFORTH on Apple ][, which included 3D wireframe animations, which at the time were magical.
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> As a child, I really was amused by the demo of GraFORTH on Apple ][, which included 3D wireframe animations, which at the time were magical.
I originally wrote GraFORTH (https://archive.org/details/a2_GraFORTH_1981_Lutus_Paul) to escape the slow world of integer BASIC on my first computer (an Apple II). Because it relied on large blocks of assembly code to produce nice graphics, it perhaps misled people about what Forth could do on its own.
Later I wrote a variation I called TransFORTH (https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/documenta...) that supported floating-point. I intended to combine GraFORTH and TransFORTH, but my computer didn't have enough RAM.
Innocent times, different world, before the personal computing tail began wagging the dog.
Someone mentioning childhood tech and the creator showing up is peak HN, in the best possible way. I love little threads like this... I never used a Forth as a child, but I recall reading about it and marvelling over it at a time when getting hold of huge amounts of pirated games was easy, but finding anywhere to even buy more serious tools could be challenge... I think it was probably 20+ years before I actually ended up trying a Forth.
Thank you for one of the coolest things I'd ever seen back then... The space shuttle animation was pure magic to me back then.
> I originally wrote GraFORTH
Oh really?
Given you were around at about the correct time period, could you hazard a guess at what dialect this very old Forth game from Byte magazine was written in?
https://github.com/RickCarlino/Cosmic-Conquest-1982
It has some graphics commands in that I couldn't find in any other version of Forth on the Apple II. I'm a little outside the Apple II demographic, since they didn't really take off in the UK - although the very first home computer I ever used was an Apple II owned by the father of the guy that founded Rockstar Games :-)
> could you hazard a guess at what dialect this very old Forth game from Byte magazine was written in?
The writeup identifies the original Forth source/version as most likely FIGForth '78, so I assume that's correct. This doesn't mean it has no code borrowed from elsewhere, and we might never sort that out.
I should add that Forth has the property that you go from nothing to writing programs pretty quickly, because it's all based on RPN (like HP calculators) and there's very little infrastructure required to create a usable environment -- unlike virtually every other language I've created/used.
My having been a fan of HP calculators beforehand played a part in getting me started with Forth -- RPN was an aspect of Forth I didn't have to learn before getting started.
Remember also that the 6502 (the Apple II processor) had a rather easily understood assembly instruction set, which meant any adept 6502 programmer could basically decode and grab other people's work without needing a source listing. No longer true for modern processors.
Guess how we updated each other during program development and updates? Ready? 5 1/4 inch floppy disks stuffed into big manila envelopes, then snail-mailed. No, not making this up.
Yup. I am old enough to have posted cassettes rather than 5.25" floppies, although I was using a Z80-based machine that ran Forth and took 5.25" floppies as late as the early 90s. Wildly specialised bit of kit, and I wish I'd stolen it when I had the chance because it's probably been thrown over the side of an oil rig by now.
The first Forth machine I used was the Jupiter Ace, which was a home computer sold in the UK by a couple of guys who spun their company off from Sinclair. It was a bit too underpowered and a bit too late and a bit too weird to really "land" - everyone either had a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64 by then, and schools and rich kids had BBC Micros (I got right into 6502 machine code on the one we had in school when I was about 9, and then got my hands on its predecessor, the Acorn Atom). I also had a couple of Epson HX20s that the company my dad worked for had used as data loggers, which had Forth ROMs fitted. That's how I got right into 6809 programming, and that chip is ludicrously suitable for Forth!
I got Cosmic Conquest working on an Apple II emulator but the support code around getting it working is frankly terrifying. I used a fig-Forth disk, and wrote my own implementations of the graphics words used there, which I guess is what the original author did.
Tracking them down has so far proved impossible, and it's quite likely they are no longer around.
Yes, Paul Lutus wrote GraForth.
As for vhtab, I don't know.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.forth/c/WqrpoPtxwoM/m/...
A customized figforth 79forth proforth or some other forth lost in a basement.
As a user, I'm just here to offer ::applause:: for GraFORTH.
I used Graforth, that was so cool! I owe you a beer for pirating it. I also (like most Forth enthusiasts) developed my own Apple ][, based on FIG-FORTH, with its own graphics libraries and PRODOS integration, and used it to write terminal emulators.
Then I discovered Mitch Bradley's Sun Forth (aka ForthMacs, Open Firmware, IEEE 1275-1994), which was originally based on Langton and Perry Forth 83, but has a metacompiler and can target many platforms and word sizes and cpus.
More thoughts and links on Mitch Bradley, Open Firmware and Forth programming:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21822840
https://github.com/MitchBradley/openfirmware
Has anybody else ever had the dubious experience of using "Cap'n Software Forth"? That's what John Draper wrote [Sl]EasyWriter with (which he wrote on work furlough from the Alameda County Jail). During the 90's SF Raves scene I would always carry some emergency tobacco around as repellent, just in case I ran into him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyWriter
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html
>The first Forth system I used was Cap'n Software Forth, on the Apple ][, by John Draper. The first time I met John Draper was when Mike Grant brought him over to my house, because Mike's mother was fed up with Draper, and didn't want him staying over any longer. So Mike brought him over to stay at my house, instead. He had been attending some science fiction convention, was about to go to the Galopagos Islands, always insisted on doing back exercises with everyone, got very rude in an elevator when someone lit up a cigarette, and bragged he could smoke Mike's brother Greg under the table. In case you're ever at a party, and you have some pot that he wants to smoke and you just can't get rid of him, try filling up a bowl with some tobacco and offering it to him. It's a good idea to keep some "emergency tobacco" on your person at all times whenever attending raves in the bay area. My mom got fed up too, and ended up driving him all the way to the airport to get rid of him. On the way, he offered to sell us his extra can of peanuts, but my mom suggested that he might get hungry later, and that he had better hold onto them. What tact!
As annoying and creepy as he is, he does have a lot of great stories to tell...
Calling Richard Nixon:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22671636
Execute Some "Get High" Instructions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39575987
Forging BART Cards:
My favorite John Draper story -- not sure if it's true, heard it from several sources.
One day IBM called me up and asked if I would write them something like Apple Writer, for their new PC. I instantly asked, "Under what terms?" I think that surprised them -- I was wrongly rumored to be all programmer and no business sense.
They replied, "We give you $100,000 in royalties, after which we own the program." I thought a bit and said, "Hmm ... $100,000 ... that's about 15 days of Apple Writer royalties." A long silence on the phone line.
So they realized I wasn't going to write anything for them. Then, according to rumor, they asked John Draper and he agreed -- he wrote them a word processor. A really terrible one.
After IBM voluntarily withdrew his program from the market, Draper is rumored to have said, "They asked for a $100,000 program and I gave them one."
Yep, we were pretty snotty in those days. But then, we didn't have to compete with AI.
The difference between Forth and Lisp could not be more pronounced. Forth source code has entirely implicit structure, you can't even tell which function is called on which arguments. Lisp has entirely explicit structure which makes it much easier to read and edit. Lisp needs only a single primitive (lambda) to create the entire programming language, whereas Forth needs many primitives which break the core idea of the language in order to be usable. All of what is elegant about Lisp is ultimately lacking in Forth.
I think I'd agree from a mathematical perspective that lisp is more elegant, but implementation-wise, I really do like Forth's simplicity. They're both really cool.
I had a copy of that as well - I forget whether it was a Christmas gift or if I bought it. The demos were neat, but I was lacking in ideas when I had time to play with it, and the Apple didn't go to college with me.
But if I were going to do some "from the ground up, using first principles, with nobody else's libraries" embedded work, Forth would certainly be something I'd consider.
>Yeah, PostScript is a dialect of Forth.
My understanding is they were developed independently.