Name: Starting FORTH
ISBN: 9780138429300

What Hacker News says

6581Jul 2026

From personal experience, I strongly disagree with the negative comments saying Forth isn't suitable for teaching children.

"Starting Forth" by Leo Brodie was the first programming book I ever read when I was about 6 or 7 years old, after my dad brought it home from work (where they used Forth). To me, the language felt very intuitive and easy to grasp. And Brodie's illustrations helped a lot with visualizing how it all worked.

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anthkApr 2026

- Algol 68 docs: https://algol68-lang.org/resources 'a68g' it's a free as in freedom compiler.

- Forth: you can use PFE,Gforth for ANS Forth requeriments. Or EForth if you reached high skills levels where the missing stuff can be just reimplemented.

EForth under Muxleq: https://github.com/howerj/muxleq I can provide a working config where a 90% of it would be valid across SF.

Starting Forth, ANS version: https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

Thinking Forth, do this after finishing SF: https://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/

Also, Forth Scientific Library. You can make it working with both GForth and PFE, just read the docs.

Full pack: https://www.taygeta.com/fsl/library/Library.tgz

Helping Forth code for GForth/PFE. If you put it under scilib/fs-util.fs, load it with:

    s" scilib/fsu-util.fs" included

https://www.taygeta.com/fsl/library/fsl-util.fs

- Lisp. s9fes, it will compile under any nix/Mac/BSD out there, even with MinC.

S9fes: http://www.t3x.org/s9fes/

Pick the bleeding edge version, it will compile just fine.

For Windows users: MinC, install both EXE under Windows. First, minc

exe, then buildtools*exe: https://minc.commandlinerevolution.nl/english/home.html

Then get 7zip to decompress the s9fes TGZ file, cd to that directory, and run 'make'.

Run ./s9 to get the prompt, or ./s9 file.scm where file.scm it's the source code.

In order to learn Scheme, there's are two newbie recommended books before "SICP".

Pick any, CACS, SS, it doesn't matter, both will guide you before SICP, the 'big' book on Scheme:

Simply Scheme https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/pdf/

Simply.scm file, select from ';;; simply.scm version 3.13 (8/11/98)' to '(strings-are-numbers #t)' and save it as simply.scm

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ssch27/appendix-simply....

Concrete Abstractions

Book:

https://www.d.umn.edu/~tcolburn/cs1581/ConcreteAbstractions....

The SCM files needed to be (load "foo.scm") ed in the code in order to do the exercises:

https://github.com/freezoo/scheme-concabs

If you are en Emacs user, just read the Elisp intro, it will work for a different Lisp family but with similar design.

Spot the differences:

Scheme (like s9):

    (define (square x)
     (* x x))

We try:

    >(square 20) 
    400

Elisp/Common Lisp (as the web site shows):

    (defun square (x)
     (* x x))

Same there:

     >(square 20)
     400

- Ok, ML like languages:

https://www.t3x.org/mlite/index.html

If you follow the instructions on compiling s9, mlite it's similar with MinC for Windows. If you are a Unix/Linux/Mac user, you already know how to do that.

You got the whole docs in the TGZ file, and the web.

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anthkFeb 2026

9front's manuals will teach you the basics, the actual basics of CS (plan9 intro if you know to adapt yourself, too). These are at /sys/doc. Begin with rc(1), keep upping the levels. You can try 9front in a virtual machine safely. There are instructions to get, download and set it up at https://9front.org .

Write servers/clients with rc(1) and the tools at /bin/aux, such as aux/listen. They already are irc clients and some other tools. Then, do 9front's C book from Nemo.

On floats, try them at 'low level', with Forth. Get Muxleq https://github.com/howerj/mux. Compile it:

          cc -O2 -ffast-math -o muxleq muxleq.c

Edit muxleq.fth, set the constants in the file like this:

      1 constant opt.multi      ( Add in large "pause" primitive )
      1 constant opt.editor     ( Add in Text Editor )
      1 constant opt.info       ( Add info printing function )
      0 constant opt.generate-c ( Generate C code )
      1 constant opt.better-see ( Replace 'see' with better version )
      1 constant opt.control    ( Add in more control structures )
      0 constant opt.allocate   ( Add in "allocate"/"free" )
      1 constant opt.float      ( Add in floating point code )
      0 constant opt.glossary   ( Add in "glossary" word )
      1 constant opt.optimize   ( Enable extra optimization )
      1 constant opt.divmod     ( Use "opDivMod" primitive )
      0 constant opt.self       ( self-interpreter [NOT WORKING] )

Recompile your image:

       ./muxleq muxleq.dec < muxleq.fth > new.dec

New.dec will be your main Forth. Run it:

       ./muxleq new.dec

Get the book from the author, look at the code on how the Floating code it's implemented in software. Learn Forth with the Starting Forth book but for ANS forth, and Thinking Forth after doing Starting Forth. Finally, bacl to 9front, there's the 'cpsbook.pdf' too from Hoare on concurrent programming and threads. That will be incredibily useful in a near future. If you are a Go programmer, well, you are at home with CSP.

Also, compare CSP to the concurrent Forth switching tasks. It's great to compare/debug code in a tiny Forth on Subleq/Muxleq because if your code gets relatively fast, it will fly under GForth and due to constraints you will force yourself to be a much better programmer.

CPU's? Cache's? RAM latency? Muxleq/Subleq behaves nearly the same everywhere depending on your simulation speed. In order to learn, it's there. On real world systems, glibc, the Go runtime, etc, will take care of that making a similar outcome everyhere. If not, most of the people out there will be aware of stuff from SSE2 and up to NEON under ARM.

Hint: they already are code transpilers from Intel dedicated instructions to ARM ones and viceversa.

>How garbage collection works inside of the JVM?

No, but I can figure it a little given the Zenlisp one as a slight approximation. Or... you know, Forth, by hand. And Go which seems easiers and it doesn't need a dog slow VM trying to replicate what Inferno did in the 90's which far less resources.

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FarmerPotatoFeb 2026

Still good:

Lee Brodie:

1. Starting Forth. Somewhat dated (1979 FIG-Forth dialect)

2. Thinking Forth. Has software design lessons that go far beyond Forth.

These are free in pdf.

Elizabeth Rather, of Forth Inc:

3. Forth Programming Handbook. What I keep on my desk for Standard Forth.

4. Forth Application Techniques.

Dr. Ting has some good books. They're free pdfs now.

I also keep: Texas Instruments: TI Forth, by Leon Tietz, Leslie O'Hagan... and the vastly improved fbForth manual by Lee Stewart.