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Abstract

Forth is unique among programming languages in that its development and proliferation has been a grass-roots effort unsupported by any major corporate or academic sponsors. Originally conceived and developed by a single individual, its later development has progressed under two significant influences: professional programmers who developed tools to solve application problems and then commercialized them, and the interests of hobbyists concerned with free distribution of Forth. These influences have produced a language markedly different from traditional programming languages.

Authors

Elizabeth Rather is the co-founder of FORTH, Inc. and is a leading expert in the Forth programming language. Elizabeth was a colleague of Chuck Moore back when he worked at NRAO in the early 1970s. During his development of Forth, she became the second ever Forth programmer. Since then, she has become a leading expert in the language and one of its main proponents. Elizabeth was the chair of the ANSI Technical Committee that produced the ANSI Standard for Forth (1994).  She is an author of several books on Forth and gives regular training seminars on its usage.

Don Colburn was one of the earliest Forth users. He was one of the founders of the Forth Interest Group, and contributed to the development of the first public-domain figForth.  Subsequently, he founded Creative Solutions, Inc. (CSI), which introduced MacForth™ in 1984. MacForth was the first programming language capable of running on the Macintosh when it was first introduced.  Don was a member of the ANSI Technical Committee that produced the ANSI Standard for Forth (1994). He died in 2009.

Chuck Moore is Chairman and CTO of Green Arrays, Inc. He co-founded FORTH, Inc., in 1971 and went on to develop a Forth-based chip (RTX2000) in the mid 1980s, derivatives of which are still being used widely by NASA. At Computer Cowboys, Mr. Moore designed the Sh-Boom microprocessor and then co-founded iTv, an Internet Appliance manufacturer. During the 1990s, he used his own CAD software to design several custom VLSI chips, including the F21 processor with a network interface. More recently, he invented colorForth and ported his VLSI design tools to it. Moore served as CTO for IntellaSys during development of the S40 multi-computer chip.

Presented at the ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL II, April, 1993). Published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, No. 3 March 1993.

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