understand? if insane you ! then

by Mr. Bad

1999-08-14 12:24:08

Quantum Deepfried Electro-Diddle

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!

Check it out yourself

paco@pigdog.org