Forth - The Early Years - Bret Victor

Forth - The Early Years

Chuck Moore chipchuck@ 1991

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To avoid any copyright issues I asked for permission, and kindly Chuck did allow the posting: chipchuck@ Looks good. Early Years reads well. You're welcome to post it.

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Contents

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Abstract

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Forward 1999

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Contents

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Forth

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MIT, SAO, 1958

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Stanford, SLAC, 1961

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Free-lance, 1965

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Mohasco, 1968

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NRAO, 1971

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Moral

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References

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Summary

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Abstract

Forth is a simple, natural computer language. It has achieved remarkable acceptance where efficiency is valued. It evolved in the 1960s on a journey from university through business to laboratory. This is the story of how a simple interpreter expanded its abilities to become a complete programming language/operating system.

Forward 1999

This paper was written for the HOPL II (History of programming languages) conference. It was summarily rejected, apparently because of its style. Much of the content was included in the accepted paper [Rather 1993].

This HTML version was reformatted from the original typescript. Minimal changes were made to the text. Examples of source code were suggested by reviewer Phil Koopman. They've not yet been added.

Contents

Forth MIT, SAO, 1958 Stanford, SLAC, 1961 Free-lance, 1965 Mohasco, 1968 NRAO, 1971 Moral

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