Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Is Google down again? Bummer.

FORTH is still used to bring up new silicon because of its tiny core, you only need a couple of working assembly instructions to bootstrap yourself into a working system, you could do this entirely in cache or a small static RAM if you don't have a working memory controller yet.

It is also used all over the place in embedded controllers, https://arduino-forth.com/ , http://www.piclist.com/techref/microchip/language/forths.htm , https://github.com/nimblemachines/muforth , from PICs to ARMs and everything in between.

You won't see a lot of hype around it and repos tend to be old because they 'just work', typically a user of such a system would download it and customize it to the point that sharing it would be pointless, the whole idea is to extend the language to become the application.



Did you forget what the OP asked? Is anyone using Forth in production?

I very much doubt it.


You are probably using it yourself, right now. You just don't realize it because embedded stuff isn't sexy, won't make it to the blogosphere and just sits there doing it's job, year after year. Every vehicle, every boot of a larger machine probably uses FORTH at some stage.

Not everything is web based and not everybody is part of the hype cycle.

Since you're asking 'anyone' one example should be enough to satisfy you with proof: every IBM Power series system has Open Firmware on it which you can boot into: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power9/0009-ESS?topic=asmi-power... . Note that that doesn't even mention Forth by name.

Also note that the world is a lot larger than just the English speaking part of it, and that bringing up new systems is usually transitory: as soon as you can bootstrap yourself out of a FORTH environment you do so because it is a bit limiting.

Finally, as long as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_X-ray_Observatory Chandra is still online at least someone is using FORTH in production.

It's just one of many space missions where FORTH plays a role.


My impression so far is Forth development usually "limited" around hardware/embedded development. And for whatever reasons, seems like there are no much effort (?) to bring Forth to greater audiences (like us web/mobile dev apps, for example :D ).

Yes I know some folks are trying to change this, e.g:

- https://factorcode.org/

- https://8th-dev.com/




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: