Teaching Kids Forth

3 months ago by Andy to c/concatenative

Forth is uncommonly used to teach programming to kids. Scripting languages like Python and visual environments like Scratch are far more popular options. But when I got the opportunity to introduce middle and high school students to programming, I chose the stack-oriented concatenative language from 1970. I was ecstatic about this opportunity. I'm passionate about giving people just a bit more control over the potential locked up in the devices they carry with them every day. When people know more about computers in general and about making their own software in particular, whole worlds open up. This gave me the chance to pry the door to that world open for people who likely would have never discovered it otherwise.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/1249849

Comments

concatenative

@programming.dev

Hello!

This space is for sharing news, experiences, announcements, questions, showcases, etc. regarding concatenative programming concepts and tools.

We'll also take any programming described as:

pipelined
stack-oriented
tacit
postfix / reverse Polish notation (RPN)
fluent
cascading
chained

From Wikipedia:

A concatenative programming language is a point-free computer programming language in which all expressions denote functions, and the juxtaposition of expressions denotes function composition. Concatenative programming replaces function application, which is common in other programming styles, with function composition as the default way to build subroutines.

For example, a sequence of operations in an applicative language like the following:

y = foo(x)
z = bar(y)
w = baz(z)

...is written in a concatenative language as a sequence of functions:

x foo bar baz

Active Languages

Let me know if I've got any of these misplaced!

Primarily Concatenative

Concatenative-ish, Chain-y, Pipe-y, Uniform Function Call Syntax, etc.

Cheat Sheets & Tutorials

Discord

IRC

#concatenative on irc.libera.chat

Wikis

concatenative wiki

Wikipedia Topics

Subreddits

GitHub Topics

go to feed...