third
moonscript
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third | moonscript | |
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3 | 35 | |
72 | 3,118 | |
- | - | |
0.0 | 4.4 | |
over 8 years ago | 6 months ago | |
Forth | Lua | |
BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License | - |
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third
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Forth: The programming language that writes itself: The Web Page
My first programming languages were x86 assembly and Forth. My Dad was into Forth, and I learned programming from him. I wrote several x86 Forth systems for DOS as a teenager, culminating in a somewhat-polished ANS compatible one I called "Third": https://github.com/benhoyt/third -- it's kind of amazing being able to have a fully bootstrapped Forth compiler (including an assembler) in a couple thousand lines of code.
Just the other day I transcribed an old article I had co-written for the Forth Dimensions magazine. I still like the ideas in Forth, but the stack manipulation quickly gets tedious and is very hard to read. Just look at the code examples in https://benhoyt.com/writings/forth-lookup-tables/ -- especially Search-Table. Yikes! Yes, naming things is hard, but apparently not naming them is even harder.
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Lookup Tables: article I co-authored for “Forth Dimensions” as a teen
I just finished transcribing this from the scanned PDF, and thought it might be interesting to others. It certainly took me back! I was really into Forth as a teenager, and wrote several of my own Forth compilers [1]. It's a unique and interesting language, though most Forthers spend too much time writing their own compilers and being language zealots instead of getting things done. It's hard to believe anyone could think the Search-Table code in "Figure Five" is sane. There's more stack-effect tracking than code!
[1] For example, "Third", a 16-bit self-hosting Forth compiler for DOS: https://github.com/benhoyt/third
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Byte Magazine: The FORTH programming language
My dad, who was a minister by day and Forth hacker by night, got me into programming when I was a teenager, and Forth and x86 assembly were my first languages. I wrote a small self-hosting Forth compiler for 8086 DOS (https://github.com/benhoyt/third), a tiny 32-bit Forth operating system for the 386 (I guess you'd call it "bare metal" today). Incidentally, my brother used my Third compiler at his work for a few years to write test scripts for embedded systems.
I still love the simplicity of Forth, and the fact that you can get a full Forth system going in a few KB on a new microcontroller. I learned the basics of assemblers, bootstrapped compilers (though not parsers, because Forth doesn't need a "real" parser), recursion, how to implement control structures, various kinds of bytecode (called "threaded code" in the Forth world), linked lists, hash tables, and so on. I also dislike 3rd party dependencies to this day (Forth has a pretty extreme not-invented here culture).
I was really intrigued by Factor when it came out (https://factorcode.org/), as a modern incarnation of Forth, but I never really used it. By that point I had a "real" programming job and was doing absurd things like writing CGI scripts in C, until I discovered Python in the early 2000's. I stuck with Python for many years and really liked it, though more recently I've moved to Go.
I learned a lot by playing with Forth as a teenager, and I'm really grateful for the language. It was an amazing way to start programming.
moonscript
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Why Fennel?
Now I like lua, and think single pass is the way to go for interpreted, since you don't have the disadvantage of a slow compile time no matter how big your codebase gets, BUT its not great to write in. things like +=, ++, are not possible, which means the only solution is to transpile into it, which has led to some good languages like moonscript[0], teal[1] which offers static type checking, an absolute must as your codebase grows.
[0]: https://moonscript.org/
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Forth: The programming language that writes itself: The Web Page
That can be very productive and clever, but be - and stay - aware that such polyglot solutions tend to be maintenance headaches in the longer run.
There is a really nice open source project out there that allows you to train your hearing and your sightreading, but it's written in the authors own language which in turn compiles to JavaScript and the headache to set up their toolchain is such that I haven't bothered fixing any of the bugs that I'm aware of (and there are plenty).
https://sightreading.training/
https://github.com/leafo/sightreading.training
It's written in a language called 'Moonscript':
https://github.com/leafo/moonscript
Which compiles to Lua. Which compiles to JS.
Madness. Nice madness, but still, it stopped me from being a contributor.
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Lua: The Little Language That Could
RE: the cost of switching at this point, what about languages that compile to Lua? Like https://moonscript.org/. That would let you keep the legacy code, no?
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Trying to make a website with Lapis
In the case of Lapis, it is actually written in Moonscript, which needs a few more things.
- Launch HN: Moonrepo (YC W23) – Open-source build system
- Using Lua with C++
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Using other languages
There's also some languages made to compile straight to Lua: - MoonScript is the most popular Lua wrapper - it's built to be more Python-like, featuring indentation-based scopes, function calls without parentheses, lambda syntax, list comprehension, and much more. - Yuescript is a modern update to MoonScript that adds more features (I haven't used it myself, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how it differs from MS). - Teal is a version of Lua that adds static typing for better code standards.
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Best Websites For Coders
A programmer-friendly language that compiles to Lua.
- data types in function definition
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A MiniTron In 47 Lines
This is a sample code for learning, written in Moonscript for TIC-80:
What are some alternatives?
foth - Tutorial-style FORTH implementation written in golang
Yuescript - A Moonscript dialect compiles to Lua.
MiniForth - A tiny Forth I built in a week. Blog post: https://www.thanassis.space/miniforth.html
nelua-lang - Minimal, efficient, statically-typed and meta-programmable systems programming language heavily inspired by Lua, which compiles to C and native code.
r216-forth - A Forth implementation for the R216K8B Powder Toy computer.
TypeScriptToLua - Typescript to lua transpiler. https://typescripttolua.github.io/
sightreading.training - 🎹 Sight reading training tool
luau - A fast, small, safe, gradually typed embeddable scripting language derived from Lua
jonesforth - Mirror of JONESFORTH
TIC-80 - TIC-80 is a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.
goforth - A fully compiled and forth-like language including a small virtual machine.
LuaJIT - Mirror of the LuaJIT git repository