From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-08-26T04:06:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Functional Programming

Martin DeMello wrote:
> On 8/25/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>> Forth, on the other hand, is something I'd probably learn now if I
>> didn't already know it. It's an amazing set of concepts that look really
>> weird until you stare at them long enough. At some point in the process,
>> you go, "Oh My God -- that's *brilliant*,", at which point you are a
>> Forth addict. :)
> 
> I do want to learn a concatenative at some point - any opinions as to
> whether I should start with Forth or jump straight to Joy or Factor?
> 
> martin
> 
> 
I guess it depends on what you want to do with it. I only briefly looked
at Joy and haven't even heard of Factor until just now. Joy struck me as
an "academicized" Forth, which I think is a "bad" thing. Forth itself
has a current ANS standard and a working committee building a new
standard, at least two commercial vendors and dozens of open-source
implementations. People actually get paid to write Forth.

I would start with GNU Forth (gforth). It's available in most Linux
distros and should run anywhere GCC runs. It does have a GCC dependency,
which might be an issue on Macs or Solaris. I don't have either so I
can't answer that -- it runs very well on Linux and Windows.