Over the Shoulder 1 - Text Preprocessing in Forth
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as a concrete look at Forth in action, including its snapshot/restore dictionary model.
What it is
Samuel Falvo II live-codes a text preprocessor and blog engine in Forth over about an hour. It shows Forth's dictionary being snapshotted and restored in place of mutation, and how a small Forth system gets real work done.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends thomascountz · 2025-09 · on “Easy Forth (2015)”
This is a great resource and running in the browser is great for fast feedback. Thanks for sharing! I just started learning Forth a month or so ago, and I found this video from Andreas Wagner[1] fun to watch. If anyone goes through OP's book and find yourself wanting to see Forth in action, I recommend the video. [1]: [this video]
Cites brandonbloom · 2017-11 · on “Dueling Rhetoric of Clojure and Haskell”
Clojure is following in the tradition of lisps that do this right. The important bit is the extra indirection on top-level names. I wrote more about it here a long time ago: [LINK] Also interesting is the other end of the spectrum: Forth. Instead of mutation, offers snapshots and restores of the “dictionary”. See this video: [this video]
Cites pointfree · 2019-07 · on “Levels of code in Forth programming (2002)”
"Over the Shoulder 1 - Text Preprocessing in Forth" [this video] - Sam Falvo demonstrates writing a blog engine in Forth.