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Agreed, FORTH is repl-driven in the sense I mean. The main difference from Lisp and Smalltalk systems is that FORTH environments are, generally speaking, more spartan.

In the late 1980s I had a group of friends at Apple that included Smalltalk, Lisp, and FORTH programmers. We certainly found plenty of things to admire and attempt to steal from one another, and everyone accepted the basic goodness of building systems by engaging in conversation with them as they run.

Lisp and Smalltalk cross-pollenated each other more than each did with FORTH, but maybe Slava Pestov's Factor is a glimpse of what you get if FORTH is more in the mix.



Yeah, Factor's environment looks really similar to something like Smalltalk. The thing with Forth is that it looks really daunting to perform higher level tasks that I'd be interested in performing on a day to day basis.


Forth's answer to your need is: Write your own higher level utilities in Forth. :)

I find it better to think of Forth as a clever Macro Assembly language for a two stack VM.

When used as designed, one does not actually program in Forth. You first write a tiny "language" and program the App in that.

Not a popular choice today.


It can definitely be done, but historically, that's not really been its sweet spot.




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