I believe it was Ken "The Snake" Stabler who said, "I'm ashamed to
live in a country where white slavers and drug smugglers go
to jail, yet Forth programmers are allowed to walk the streets
as free men." I concur! have been investigating the world's most BAD CRAZY
programming language: FORTH, and I must say, it's REALLY
GODDAMN EVIL.
I've been looking for a programming language that's even more obscure,
unsupported, and poorly documented than Guile. Intercal came to
mind, but it's built to be weird and obscure. And, it's not really a
modern usable language. Then I turned to Pigdog's very own ever-lovin' Juggler
Vain, who's way hard to understand just in regular English. He's ALSO a devotee
of the queer language known as Forth. Which, like, is a good enough endorsement
for me! Forth is the next language to learn on my stack.
Forth gets its name from the idea that it's a "fourth generation language,"
which was this sick abortive branch of the programming language family that
died in horrible obscurity sometime early this decade. Thank God! The whole
brood produced really gruesome abominations, the H.P. Lovecraft-style Catskill
degenerates of the programming world. I mean, look at the name "FORTH!" It's
got a GENETIC DEFECT of a missing "U." And the language is twisted like a bad
freak child. That's what I'm talking about here! 4GLs are the hillbillies of
program space.
Forth is a completely SIDEWAYS language to learn. It's like some infernal mix
between a portable assembler, a 1980s proprietary desktop database language, an
HP reverse-Polish calculator, and a proof-of-concept for various discredited
artificial intelligence theories. The screwy part is that it is sufficiently
low-level that there are startlingly fast implementations, and your code comes
out hard-to-the-metal fast. This combination of incredible speed and
brain-twisting syntax makes sure that the main uses for Forth are a) for
firmware vendors to write air-traffic control systems and b) for serial killers
to write their manifestos.
So, I figgered I better find me a Forth implementation and start hacking. There
are a couple of Forth interpreters for Linux out there, but I personally like
GForth, the GNU Forth engine. First, because it's GNU software. Second, because
it's got one of those manual pages that has a lot of just BLANK SECTIONS, named
"Files" and "I/O" and stuff. Like, FIGGER out the functions yourself! Third, it
got to version 0.3 in 1996 and just STOPPED. Who knows where it's gonna go from
here?! Lastly, the only Web
page dedicated to Gforth is one paragraph long. Yay for NO DOCUMENTATION.
The link below goes to the Forth Interest Group (FIG) Web site. These people
must be even more degenerate and incomprehensible than ME. I recommend Forth
HIGHLY for anyone who wants to really cause damage to their cerebral cortex. It
is the perfect language for programming evil robots to take over the Desert
Planet Garfalune. Bad People of the Future: USE FORTH!
