[colorforth] Another Crazy Colorforth Project

["David J. Goehrig" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Speaking of what hardware CF runs on, I've recently demoed my new colorforth inspired environment here in Buffalo, and am taking names and email addresses for a closed beta (launched this month).  

I took some inspiration from Brad Nelson's Rainbow Forth and  Charles Chidlers's Retro forth, and I've implemented a colorforth like language compiler in javascript.  Unlike Rainbow and Retro, you program a colorforth in a webbrowser and then press CMD-C to compile it to a native binary, (CMD-E evaluates).  

Intel x86 is currently working, and I'm going to finish up the AVR32 this month before the official launch.  I've also got a Javascript/Self style object model working with the compiler, so editing objects uses a simple slot based structured editor, and inheritence is prototype based which works very well with Forth idioms.

As an added bonus, I'm working on a translator that allows you to type Javascript and have it auto converted to Newscript.  So you can build objects in a shared programming environment, and then compile them to native or emulate in the browser depending on if you want speed or not.

For the time being, I'm only supporting Safari and Firefox, (IE will probably never work), and I'm producing native binaries for Linux, *BSD, and Mac OS X.  You can also produce raw binary images for use on embedded hardware, or for dedicated machines.

The x86 compiler is 129 lines of javascript, and can be ported to any other architecture with 44 lines of code.  It runs fast enough that compilation of pretty much every program I've written, including a native newscript compiler in newscript, is practically instantaneous.

My goal for this project is to put a powerful compiler in the hands of every kid with a webbrowser.  More over, you don't need to install any software to run it, so you can create binaries on a public library computer.  Also as the tool is collaborative, multiple kids can all work on the same project at once, which will help them teach each other.

Ultimately, a system like this is terribly disruptive of the current industry model of computing.  It bring Forth to the masses :)  

Dave

PS. If anyone on this list is interested in helping out with the beta, let me know.  I'd like to have this launched soon. 




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