Properties5
| Type | Article |
| Author | ratfactor.com |
| Date | Jul 16, 2023 |
| URL | http://ratfactor.com/forth/the_programming_language_that_writes_itself.html |
| Note created | Jul 16, 2023 |
In the 1990s, Usenet newsgroups (wikipedia.org) were where it was at. For example, Linus Torvalds’s initial announcement of Linux was to comp.os.minix in 1991.
I heard tell of a programming language so flexible that you could change the values of integers.
I heard tell of a programming language so flexible that you could change the values of integers. They said that language was called Forth and it was created by a mad wizard called Chuck Moore who could write any program in a couple screens of code.
Putting all of that power into a “shirt pocket” calculator was an astounding accomplishment at the time. Legend has it that the size of the HP-35 was based on the dimensions of Bill Hewlett’s actual shirt pocket. HP-35 calculators have been in space. They killed off the slide rule.
the point here is that RPN syntax lets you express nested expressions without requiring parenthesis to get the order of operations the way you want them. This is one of the reasons RPN fans (including those HP calculator fans I alluded to) are so enamoured with it.
This is valid Forth, assuming CAKE, HAVE, and EAT have been defined: CAKE DUP HAVE EAT