🚀 go-pugleaf

Paul Victor Birke (nonlinear@home.com) wrote:
: Dear Jeff
: 
: Was there every a higher level language like BASIC that could be
: compiled into FORTH code?

Learn C Language programming, it's much more intuitive to program in 
than was FORTH, and with today's optimized compilers produces much more
efficient code than does FORTH.

: In other works you could write in non forth terminology yet get the
: speed and compactness.

You can get the same benefits using C, only better.  FORTH pushed and
poped everything onto and from the stack, which in its day was kind of
novel but today, largely due to it's total lack of type checking, its
inability to be useful in anything but minimal code implementations,
and the horror of trying to maintain and expand an application written
in FORTH, FORTH is now an anachronism.  Fortunately, today only a 
few legacy FORTH applications are in common use, and those mostly in
Radio Astronomy.

With today's compilers, anything you could do in FORTH you can do in
C better, and much safer.
 
: I left Forth in the early 1980s when I got my first Ohio Scientific PC
: in 1979 with Interpretive BASIC from Bill Gates BTW!

Most of us abandoned FORTH when we obtained our first C compiler. Since
that time I know of no one who has ever returned to FORTH.

                                                     Harry C.