[net.micro.cbm] Alternate Languages

russell@ihuxu.UUCP (Larry Russell) (03/30/84)

A question was raised regarding alternate languages for the C64.

I have a FORTH cartridge from HES software.  Some observations:

	FORTH takes some getting used to.  Everything is in RPN, and
	all "words" act on the stack.  For instance, you have to make
	sure that every loop leaves the stack with the same number of
	elements as it started with, or the system will run out of
	stack space very quickly.

	It's impossible to write unstructured FORTH.  If you tried,
	you would go insane trying to debug it.  Think about the
	comment about the stack if you had defined a word that was 20
	screens (screen pages) long or you had branches all over the
	place.

	FORTH reminds me of C and UNIX in the following sense:
	It is a high level language, but lets the programmer have access
	at the machine level when needed.  It is written in itself.
	Everything (the operating system, the compiler, the editor, the
	assembler) is really treated exactly the same.  So you write
	new system commands or editor commands the same way as you write
	FORTH programs.

	If you're really interested, read "STARTING FORTH."

	About the HES version:
	Being a cartridge, you don't have to waste time loading it
	into RAM.

	It comes with a screen editor and an assembler.  It has a very
	good file system which implements a simple but effective
	virtual memory system.

	It is a fairly complete version of FIGFORTH, plus it has a bunch
	of sound and sprite words, plus a sprite editor/loader system
	which is excellent.

	I got it for about $50 at (believe it or not) Toys 'R Us.
	I think it was a bargain.

	The documentation provided is really only the minimum they could
	possibly provide to document the unique features of this
	implementation.  The little book they give you falls apart.
	There are some bugs in the sample programs provided.

					Larry Russell
					AT&T-Bell Laboratories
					Naperville, IL