Description
The computer programming language Forth was invented by Charles H. Moore in 1970. Forth is famous for being stack based and using reverse polish notation: the operators come after their operands. A Forth program to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius (C = (F-32) × 5/9) is:
32 - 5 * 9 /
On 23rd August 2016 I had an urge to write a Forth system in 64-bit Intel Assembly. This talk is about what happens next.
In it I unpack what it means to implement a language. I dig a little into a lower-level description of typical computer hardware, and a little into 64-bit Intel Assembly. Compared to Python, Forth is a low-level language; compared to Assembly, Forth is a high-level language.
I'll talk about how we can implement one language in terms of another, by building models, and how we can model languages and model computational processes.
Forth is a tiny, but powerful, language. Moore's insight was to discover a language that was:
- small
- sufficient
- easy to implement
- extensible.
The result is that Forth implementations are typically composed of a tiny nucleus (typically in Assembly) surrounded by a larger amount of "Forth-in-Forth".
Come. Let's implement a language.