Forth Is Dead

At a time when lots of little computers are being dropped into our everyday lives, ForthIsDead seems like a losing bet.

ForthLanguage is the finely-honed expression of certain values that fit quite well into environments with small amounts of memory and processor power.

In fact, much as XP/Patterns/Smalltalk is one maximal solution to software development (one that stresses LateBinding and the flexibility it gives you), Forth (in ChuckMoore's style) is another maximal solution (one that stresses EarlyBinding, small amounts of code, and the combination of speed and flexibility (!) those give you).

1. TrollExpression used by C advocates to try to vilify and diminish Forthers self-esteem (which they usually have an ample supply of). Contrast ForthIsAliveAndKicking. (FIAAK)

2. Some advocates say that Forth was born in 1979 and died in 1983. Interestingly, while there's no doubt that Forth occupies a tiny niche, Forthers tend to be very vocal, and seem to multiply. Maybe they are on an arm-wrestling contest with Lisp?

3. Secret weapon also used by Lispers to focus the attention of the masses on more MainStreamLanguages?. This allows you to KeepYourSecretSecret?, invest in your own proprietary IPR and beat the competition, if any... -- verec

Java fan though I may be, if I were developing for anything embedded or handheld, I'd take a good look at a Forth solution before dragging in the JVM. --GeorgePaci

The JVM specification is in fact very close to being Forth. Some Forth chip manufacturers are now remarketing them as "Java chips". --KrisJohnson That's only true for those Forth implementations that are type-aware, contain exception support, and collect garbage. A Java Chip isn't a JVM, it's a Forth chip with an excessively complicated instruction set (instructions are 5 bits wide on ChuckMoore's F21). --BillTrost

I disagree that XP is a maximal solution emphasizing late binding. I've read through numerous XP texts, and nowhere do I actually see late binding explicitly mentioned as being somehow very important or otherwise critical to its success. I've written many projects in C (and yes, in Forth) employing XP principles and practices, and they all seem to work just fine.

Inflammatory content moved to ForthIsDeadFlames -- verec 27Aug2001

"It's kind of pathetic actually that we are all sitting here talking about Forth. It is not the wave of the future. It's never been the wave of the future. It's not within our power to make it the wave of the future." -- Chuck Moore, 1999 (quote taken from http://www.ultratechnology.com)

"UltraTechnology? has been out of business since 2002." -- first line of the site quoted above. Telling, what?

My argument against the "Forth is dead" theory, is that since Forth has, in my humble opinion, the highest usefulness/implementation speed and size ratio, lazy people (or people with tiny computers) will continue to implement Forth. A larger language can be made easier to use, but certainly isn't easier to implement.

A bit of Usenet discussion from 1996 illustrates what Forth users think of its appeal: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/why-forth

See: ForthReadability, ForthPortability, ForthReusability, ForthPessimism, DefinitionOfDeath

CategoryForth