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- Hacker News
- Can someone explain for me?by ajhenrydev
- I found https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page quite useful for that.by daureg
- Forth uses RPN so the "verb" is last.
That is, you provide the data first (I and Forth) and the command (heart) last.
by HFguy - Forth I assume uses reverse polish notation: arguments before the operator.
3 4 +
for example, would return 7.
by spott - 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 effectby e12e - FYI: Forth can be very readable!
IT DOES NOT NEED TO BR ALL IN ONE LINE
Most commercial forth source code is totally readable and maintainable:
comments, newlines, macros, high level commands etc
It's a total myth that its 'write only'. The same nonsense is spreaded by some nerds who actaully never wrote a single program in it.
ps. same goes to COBOL. 99% of fud by guys who never even wrote a simple program in it.
by iberator - You can't have _any_ BR all in one line.by psd1
- Complaining about COBOL in 2026 feels like a joke, especially when doing AI coding and writing book sized instructions to be read by bots.by pjmlp
- is it me or is forth coming up a lot lately? or am i just having a plate-o-shrimp situation?by joshu
- It does seem like it the last few days
- It's archaic, powerful, expressive, compact. I'd describe it as an interactive macro-assembler on steroids. What's not to like?
But it's different. Certainly not for everyone (imho that makes it even more interesting). So yeah, shouldn't hurt the HN audience to pop by now & then.
by RetroTechie - I think there are phases where it becomes more popular, if some discussion topically references FORTH, or Lisp, you know that within a few hours other people will read them and make submissions on the same theme.
It's nice.
As for me I'll almost blindly vote up anything that references FORTH because I love implementing it. I don't use it. Few people do these days, but writing toy implementations is satisfying, for sure.
(I do use Lisp, and within the past month posted my own lisp compiler here. A few votes and a brief bit of commentary which is about all it deserved. But I like seeing other people's approaches and I suspect that's why it got the minimal attention it did.)
by stevekemp - The Forth (and Lisp) posts will continue until the entire HN population has been converted.
I am glad that this forum that has mostly been colonized by the ‘normies’ still manages to keep these two languages in the conversation, capturing curious passersby with their exotic allure. In every post you see new prey with the comments like ‘I keep reading about Lisp and I still don’t get why it’s popular. All I see is parentheses. Can anybody explain?’
I fear the day HN closes is the day those languages will die.
by sph - Saw the same joke with Postscript many years ago.by lhakedal
- I don't think anyone loves PostScript though...by rbanffy
- Hey whatever happened to Factor? That was an amazingly professional offering in a weird and dusty corner of the programming languages.by ngvrnd
- it's somewhat alive.
they do some releases, they have a somewhat big project of rewriting vm in zig.
by nwalkr - Iがforthをloveするby add2
- Forward Japanese Notationby ithkuil
- 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.by hmokiguess
- I present to you, the return-stack skill:
https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills/return-...
See Self's "dynamic deoptimization", where it constructs a virtual return stack on demand that you would have had, were it not for the JIT compiler's agressive inlining.
Debugging Optimized Code with Dynamic Deoptimization, by Urs Hölzle, Craig Chambers, and David Ungar:
https://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/dynamic-deopti...
And a return-stack rotated 180 degrees around in time is an action-queue:
https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills/action-...
From games like The Sims:
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Action_queue
Also the ever popular advertisement skill, more like comefrom than goto:
https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills/adverti...
Also from The Sims:
https://simstek.fandom.com/wiki/SimAntics
The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo:
by DonHopkins - My dad proudly flew one that said FORTH <3 IF HONK THEN. Yes, people did honk.by kentbrew
- My first ever programming experience was a Minecraft computer running Forth
https://technicpack.fandom.com/wiki/Forth_language
I built a massive mining platform that repeated a series of about 200 movements to vacuum up blocks, and used that computer block to orchestrate it.
Must admit that I got a bit scared of programming until I tried again in university.
by 7734128 - My first PID controller was in Industrial Craft & Tekkit modded Minecraft.by Xmd5a
- I never noticed the disclaimer at the bottom until today
Also, the font chosen is all capsxkcd.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.by mikewarot - I would not be surprised if an easter egg exists on xkcd.com provided you satisfy these requirements.by Lutzb
- FORTH LOVE? IF HONK THENby dchest
- Slightly OT, but nothing can beat DonHopkins’s “About” section here on HN [0].by jihadjihad