Forth

(xkcd.com)

90 points | by beardyw 4 hours ago ago

19 comments

  • jihadjihad an hour ago

    Slightly OT, but nothing can beat DonHopkins’s “About” section here on HN [0].

    0: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DonHopkins

  • dchest 3 hours ago

    FORTH LOVE? IF HONK THEN

  • mikewarot an hour ago

    I never noticed the disclaimer at the bottom until today

      xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS
      at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device
      from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.
    
    Also, the font chosen is all caps
  • hmokiguess an hour ago

    Prediction: someone will make a reverse polish notation skill for interacting with claude claiming all sorts of things, like caveman, turn into another markdown as a service company, and make the news.

  • lhakedal 3 hours ago

    Saw the same joke with Postscript many years ago.

  • ajhenrydev 3 hours ago

    Can someone explain for me?

    • e12e 3 hours ago

      A different way to say the same: in forth, words get pushed on the stack, and popped from the stack by words that take arguments:

          code           stack
          I Forth love
      
          Forth love     I
      
          love           I
                         Forth
      
          ; love presumably pops
          ; subject, object args
          ; from stack - and does something 
          ; perhaps prints as side effect
      • forsalebypwner an hour ago

        Is that loss?

      • DonHopkins 30 minutes ago

        Here is some inexplicably but meticulously formatted FORTH code that uses right justified indentation! Including reverse polish notation assembley.

        https://donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-cam-forth-scr.txt

        https://donhopkins.com/home/code/tomt-users-forth-scr.txt

          ( FMOVE -- functional intersegment move                   ) HEX
        
          88 CONSTANT *MOV*  ( fn = 0 )   20 CONSTANT *AND*  ( fn = 1 )
          08 CONSTANT  *OR*  ( fn = 2 )   30 CONSTANT *XOR*  ( fn = 3 )
        
          CODE FMOVE ( fn s.seg s.off d.seg d.off length --)  AX, SI MOV
              CX POP  DI POP  ES POP  SI POP  DS POP  DX POP  AX PUSH
                                AL, # *XOR* MOV  DX, # 3 CMP  1$ JE
                                AL, #  *OR* MOV  DX, # 2 CMP  1$ JE
                                AL, # *AND* MOV  DX, # 1 CMP  1$ JE
                                AL, # *MOV* MOV               1$:
             CS: HERE 5 + , AL MOV  ( modify "[DI], AL MOV" ) 2$:
                              LODS  ES: [DI], AL MOV  DI INC  2$ LOOP
              AX, CS MOV  ES, AX MOV  DS, AX MOV  SI POP  NEXT,  END-CODE
        
                                                                    -->
    • spott 3 hours ago

      Forth I assume uses reverse polish notation: arguments before the operator.

      3 4 +

      for example, would return 7.

      • argimenes 2 hours ago

        The stack is really a convenience that makes pipeline-driven programming possible in the language.

      • zabzonk 2 hours ago

        > would return 7

        more pedantically, it would push 7 onto the stack

        • dbcurtis an hour ago

          even more pedantically, would remove 3 and 4 from the stack before pushing 7

          • DonHopkins 24 minutes ago

            Even oddly more pedantically, that's the operand stack, not to be confused with the separate return stack. >R and R> move values between the two stacks.

            On the other hand, PostScript also has a dictionary stack, which you can use to implement a Smalltalk-like object oriented programming system. And its data types and executable code are basically polymorphic homoiconic JSON (like Lisp), not raw untyped bytes like FORTH.

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22456471

            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47812317

    • HFguy 3 hours ago

      Forth uses RPN so the "verb" is last.

      That is, you provide the data first (I and Forth) and the command (heart) last.

    • daureg 2 hours ago
  • dwheeler 2 hours ago

    That beautiful is.

  • perpil an hour ago

    I first thought this was some spin on May the fourth be with you. As in how Yoda might say it.