Customer Reviews

Mastering Forth

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This book describes Forth-83, so it differs a bit from the more modern ANSI language specification, but that is not a real drawback. Any real differences are easily bridged ... and this book will teach you how.

It starts (as all Forth books do) with an introduction to the stack, and a low-level introduction to the language in general -- but it proceeds in a methodical manner all the way through to the defining words and a clear presentation of the inner workings of the Forth interpreter/compiler. It has everything you need to get up and running in Forth, in a tidy, compact package. It even includes a cogent discussion of state-smart words, and their dis/advantages.

The typesetting is a bit of a shock: the whole book is set in a typewriter font and looks rather cheap overall, but that's aesthetics and not content. You can learn Forth from this book, and learn it well enough to extend the language in any way you choose thereafter.

I began fooling with Forth in the late 1970's and have been on-and-off with the language ever since, including my current microcontroller (or embedded, if you prefer) applications. In many cases Forth is the ideal language for these jobs.

While this book doesn't have the "down home" approachability of Brodie's "Starting Forth" (the book I began with), I think it's more comprehensive, and does a better job overall of guiding the reader into the world of Forth. "Starting Forth" is available for free on the 'Net these days (updated for ANSI compatibility), but I would still recommend this book for a general introductory text -- there's a lot of meat in these pages that will carry you quite a long ways.