forth386 VS sectorforth

I think it's fine to show that you can do it, I think the main thing is to flip the order a bit.

E.g. "here's a cool thing thing we can do outcome of significantly changing a readable syntax>" to hook people, "here's how ", "and if you really want to know how to bootstrap this from basics ".

Maybe compare how e.g. Forth is often introduced, with how people describe bootstrapping of a simplistic Forth like Jonesforth or Sectorforth [2]. Showing people how they can define their own words and it fundamentally changes how they work with the language afterwards is cool to a lot of people who have no interest in details like how you an implement even numbers with a minimal set of primitives (e.g. Sectorforth relies on that).

Both are interesting to me, but I'm weird, and I think for most people it'd be easier to maintain their interest if those two aspects are either separate articles or at least if the bootstrapping is relegated to a standalone section they're clearly told they can skip.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368212

[2] https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth

> I'm not sure here how you differentiate minimalist from restrictive.

The flexibility of the language and its syntax. The more constructs are syntactic, the less minimalistic it is, and Go is a very syntactic language.

> I've always considered Go to be minimalist in terms of available tokens to the programmer: https://github.com/e3b0c442/keywords/blob/main/chart.png

No language on this chart has even a passing resemblance to minimalistic. I don't think anything does when it reaches double digit keywords.

For reference, I believe Smalltalk has 6.

And forth is more complicated because it doesn't really have keywords at all, and barely any syntax, instead it has assembly-coded / runtime-provided words (~functions) and variables. SectorForth (https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth/) is down to 8 builtin words, 2 IO words, and 5 variables (milliforth packs those behind a word instead). And so far 2 of the words have been found unnecessary / redundant.

https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth/issues

Probably well known, but I'll let it here anyway: SectorForth

sectorforth

If you want to go allll the way down to the metal, you could put https://github.com/cesarblum/sectorforth in a floppy boot sector and then work your way up from there, enabling line A20 and switching into 32-bit protected mode yourself. Certainly on the "DIY" end of the spectrum, but it sure would be satisfying.

Forth - More powerful and minimal than C, can fit in 512 bytes