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Retro: A Modern, Pragmatic Forth

by UkiahSmith on 5/23/19, 11:22 PM with 50 comments

• by new4thaccount on 5/24/19, 1:52 AM

  Another modern Forth that has a cross-compiler to make Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, Raspberry Pi, and iPhone executables is 8th.

  https://8th-dev.com/

  It comes bundled with the C++ based JUCE GUI framework, SQLite, ODBC, encrypted binaries, JSON support, and a lot of support for other things that you typically don't see in a tool written by one person. The more expensive licenses come with AWS and automotive Linux support, so nifty for this area.

  Sadly, it is closed source and commercial (although you can get source with an enterprise license I think). On the plus side, it is really cheap (there is a free version too I believe) and the main developer seems to add user requested features and fix bug reports very quickly.

  I obviously wouldn't write a production system in it (although I'm sure you could), but I wouldn't mind having a fun REPL based language to write simple and easy to distribute cross-platform desktop apps.

• by muriarte on 5/24/19, 1:19 AM

  The link http://forth.works/book.html is broken. Maybe the correct link is: http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html

• by jimnutt on 5/24/19, 1:18 AM

  It's interesting (at least to me) because it's different from anything else out there. The way it runs, the way it is compiled and the language itself are nearly unique. It's also easy to bootstrap on very small machines and fairly easy to implement. It's the light saber of programming languages, "a more elegant language for a more elegant time". But then, that could just be the nostalgia talking...

• by fouc on 5/24/19, 4:38 AM

  Retro has been in development for 2 decades and has gone through quite a few changes in that time. It is inspired by Chuck Moore's forth and avoids the mistakes of the ANSI standard.

  It is the forth of choice for any serious forth developer.

• by burlesona on 5/24/19, 12:56 AM

  I’m not too familiar with Forth, but I see posts about it and variants like this on HN from time to time.

  High-level, what makes Forth interesting? What are it’s major strengths and weaknesses?