R3forth: A concatenative language derived from ColorForth

(github.com)

37 points | by tosh 3 hours ago

3 comments

  • tl2do 36 minutes ago
    Inspired by this article, I tried to read some tutorials on Forth. My question is whether concatenative languages are AI-coding friendly. Apart from the training data availability, the question is also whether LLMs can correctly understand long flows of concatenated operations. Any ideas?
    • crq-yml 3 minutes ago
      They can produce idioms that resemble the flow of Forth code but when asked to produce a working algorithm, they get lost very quickly because there's a combination of reading "backwards" (push order) and forwards (execution order) needed to maintain context. At any time a real Forth program may inject a word into the stack flow that completely alters the meaning of following words, so reading and debugging Forth are nearly the same thing - you have to walk through the execution step by step unless you've intentionally made patterns that will decouple context - and when you do, you've also entered into developing syntax and the LLM won't have training data on that.

      I suggest using Rosetta Code as a learning resource for Forth idioms.

    • adastra22 5 minutes ago
      Any concatenative program can be reduced to a rho type, and AI are pretty good about combining properly typed abstractions.
  • vanderZwan 2 hours ago
    phreda4 has been doing cool stuff with ColorForth-likes for ages and for some reason barely gets any attention for it. Always brings a smile to my face to see it submitted here
  • tkdc926 1 hour ago
    That is a great looking tutorial. Can't wait to try it. Thanks!