Path: csiph.com!news.mixmin.net!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Hume Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: the FORTH computer language Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 09:38:23 +0100 Organization: Haphazard Lines: 20 Message-ID: <84twpj8fi8.fsf@example.com> References: <8586b234-ff9e-4fa6-8070-6dfe3df64124@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 3NtQH5oMwdXa1l1iAsMESg.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) X-No-Archive: Yes X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:aIRrMFnUmE0GgIN4EooAc/N500M= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:153203 "gareth" writes: > FORTH is not some magical solution, for it is largely the instruction set of > the English Electric KDF-9, > details of which were in the professional journals BEFORE Charles Moore came > up with FORTH. > > Programming in FORTH is programming in assembly language and any real > computing has > long set aside such a low level. > This seems a little unfair, because Forth wasn't just a language, it was an operating system. And the words used are not instructions, although they may have mapped closely to instructions in most cases. They are different in principle. And they can be typed interactively as well as in programs. And they can be as complex as you like, so you can have libraries just like C has libraries. Is C a 'higher' level than Forth?