How to build a programming language after civilization collapses

Posted by Affectionate_Mix3@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 10 comments

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ekipan85@reddit

Related: The Tumble Forth blog starts lower: depending only on firmware BIOS instead of a whole DOS.

It walks from a floppy bootsector, to keyboard/screen IO via BIOS, then buffered IO routines, words parsing, searching the dictionary, and compiling. A whole Forth, then on into DuskOS. It's worth writing one of these, the experience will teach you a lot.

One of these days I should pick specific hardware and try to write a 100%-owned software Forth. Scanning the keymatrix and arranging for screen output. I'd be cool to have a NES Forth with the Family Keyboard, it can apparently bank battery-backed RAM 8K at a time to compile code into.

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levodelellis@reddit

Just ask ben eater how to

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MokoshHydro@reddit

We did magic with Forth in 8-bit era...

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SkoomaDentist@reddit

”We”?

I’ve only ever read about Forth being used in very niche systems. Wikipedia’s ”forth was popular in the early 80s” claim is followed by the only example being a home computer I’ve never heard of (and I lived in the 80s) and an implementation existing for Apple II (but nothing about common software being written using that).

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GwanTheSwans@reddit

I mean, the Jupiter Ace may have been the only known 8-bit with Forth instead of the usual horrible BASIC builtin - but I lived through the 1980s too and Forth was indeed fairly well known and at least somewhat popular, at least here in Europe?

There were Forth impls (usually multiple ones) for e.g. Spectrum, C64, BBC Micro, CPC 8-bits.

(And indeed Amiga and Atari ST 16-bit/32-bit. x86 MS-DOS era PC no doubt too but meh, who wanted those)

Just a well-known example, far from the only thing https://www.crashonline.org.uk/08/whitelig.htm -

THE WHITE LIGHTNING PACKAGE

White Lightning is a high level development system for the Spectrum 48K. It consists of three distinct programming blocks:

The Sprite Generator

Spectra Forth

Ideal

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Farados55@reddit

I’ll tell claude to make one

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filosophikal@reddit

This is a fantasy. If civilization actually fully collapses, we would have a lot more important things to focus on first, such as surviving famine, violence, nuclear fallout, disease, energy collapse, and the destruction of global supply chains that make computers possible in the first place.

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