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FORTH on Steroids

Imagesource: Carlos Baraza, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

And because it's so exciting, we'll stay with FORTH for a moment and turn our attention to a variant, that has nothing whatsoever to do with 8-bit systems, but could at least whet your appetite.

How about a FORTH compiler and interpreter in WebAssembly?

Remko Tronçon alas @remco has implemented exactly that. And recently he also wrote about it. The idea is not that far-fetched. Compiler and interpreter for the language are not mega-complex to implement, and WebAssembly is quite a worthwhile target.

For those who couldn't or didn't want to get started with FORTH so far, Remko's article is highly recommended. Because once you've eaten the FORTH hook, you won't be able to get off this special fishing line anytime soon. Although the language itself dates back to the 70s, it is anything but outdated. Especially because of its flexibility and simple structure as well as the possibility to insert your own custom control constructs into the language. (Hello Lisp).

If you want to try hardware-software interfacing with something like Scamp and FORTH, first steps with waforth could be the foundation.

Have fun.

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