Threaded interpretive languages

What Hacker News says

1. anademMar 2026
   FORTH got me my first paid programming work in 1981: a management suite for a water company, with customer accounting and river water-flow checks (reported in a synthesized voice)! A fun project for which I home-rolled the FORTH interpreter, thanks to a book "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by R.G. Loeliger.
   thread
2. seg_lolDec 2025
   There is a good body of literature that is distinct from the academic compiler literature.

   https://t3x.org/

   https://compilerbook.com/

   https://interpreterbook.com/

   https://www.craftinginterpreters.com/

   R. G. Loeliger Threaded Interpretive Languages Their Design And Implementation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43973544

   https://github.com/IUCompilerCourse/Essentials-of-Compilatio...

   And check out Andy Keep's Nanopass Compiler work, https://nanopass.org/

   Show morethread
3. tdeckSep 2025
   If you're interested in learning more about how FORTH works I, I can recommend two very old books.

   Starting FORTH https://archive.org/details/LeoBrodieStartingFORTHIntroducti...

   Threaded Interpretive Languages https://archive.org/details/R.G.LoeligerThreadedInterpretive...

   The latter doesn't even mention FORTH, and describes some very archaic CPU architectures, but I found it fascinating because it builds things from the ground up.

   Show morethread
4. anademSep 2025
   Loeliger's 'Threaded Interpretive Languages' jumpstarted my career in the late 1970s: I built a networked water management system based on their code, which was my first big project, earning me £1,500. Note that there's a bug in their code (I no longer remember exactly where) so getting it off the ground was tricky.
   thread
5. john-tells-allJun 2025
   I adore the `Threaded Interpretive Languages` book! It very clearly describes the internals of a real language, and variations on how to get it all done.

   https://archive.org/details/R.G.LoeligerThreadedInterpretive...

   thread
6. OhMeadhbhMay 2025
   There's a great book from the late 70s / early 80s called "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by R. G. Loeliger. It's apparently up on the Internet Archive for free and worth a look if you're interested in threaded interpreters. I nano-blogged it at: https://www.bi6.us/CO/N/20250427.HTML#/043002
   thread