Re: The joy of FORTH (not)

In alt.folklore.computers Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 07:55:43 -0700, John Ames wrote:
 

On Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:41:38 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
 

Why would anyone want to use it, though?

 
For starters, it's about the simplest way to get a minimal interactive
system going on a homebrew/hobbyist computer project which still offers
full access to the bare metal ...

 
But for an RP2040, you can already cross-compile C code from a Linux-based
host, like a Raspberry Pi. That will give you “full access to the bare
metal”, without the overheads of threaded code.

You missed 2 points:

1) Mecrisp is a native compiler.  I do not think it optimizes as
   well as gcc, but slowdown is smaller than threaded code and
   size is comparable.
2) Key words above were "interactive system" and in particular
   interactive debugging.  Unfortunately some embedded systems
   have only expensive closed source debuggers.  For RP2040 in
   principle one should be able to get open source debugger,
   but RP2040 have/had trouble with compatibilty: you needed
   matched patched versions of tools and a second RP2040 to
   work as debugging interface.

Makers of RP2040 intend it as Micro-Python board, but AFAIK
Micro-Python is much slower and larger than Forth.

--
                              Waldek Hebisch