Customer Reviews (11)

Sady, not what I was hoping for.
I thought I was ordering the second edition, but it was the first.However the ordering process was smooth and the book arrived very quickly.

Reprint even if it IS available online
I bought my own used copy of this book, but it is available in its entirety online, so it is unlikely to ever be reprinted.

Great book
This book is one of the best programming language books I've read, along with "Oh! Pascal!" by Cooper and Clancy.It's use of humor and simple, straightforward examples, grab your attention right away and keep it through the entire book.It's hard to believe a programming book can be hard to put down, but this one was.

It also explains complex concepts in simple, elegant ways, just like good programs should be written.

I would recommend it to anyone learning FORTH, and I would recommend sections of it for people trying to understand specific concepts in any language.For example, the explanation of stacks was excellent!

A Truly Amazing Book
Somebody REPRINT THIS BOOK!

"Starting Forth" is the only Forth book I own. After reading it, I was able to implement a Forth runtime system, compiler, and interpreter, from scratch, in 8086 assembly - the results can be found at home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/jkf.html . I credit this mainly to Leo Brodie's skill as an expository writer. The book is a gem; if someone were to reprint it, I for one would buy several copies, just in case.

The reason no one will reprint "Starting Forth" is that Forth is not sufficiently trendy. If we rename the language "JavaForth", we'll be drowning in reprints...

Sigh.

An excellent programming introduction, not just to FORTH
This book is a very clear introduction to programming and the stack.Thecartoons are very entertaining and descriptive, and the book would makelight reading even for beginning programmers. Those who program, but notyet in Forth, will also be happy with the quick introduction.

Why onearth is this fabulous book out of print? ... Read more

Product Description
The new Third Editon of Forth Programmer's Handbook (ISBN 1419675494) is now available on Amazon.com.

Forth Programmer's Handbook provides a reference source for the most common features of the integrated software development systems based on the Forth programming language. It assumes at least an elementary knowledge of the Forth language, consistent with having studied Starting Forth and attended a Forth programming course, or the equivalent. If you are new to Forth, we encourage you to begin by reading Starting Forth carefully and working the problems at the end of each chapter.

This book is primarily intended to describe how a programmer can use Forth to solve problems. This is a rather different goal from explaining how Forth works, but it is a practical necessity for the new user of a Forth system. This manual is also organized to serve experienced programmers who need to check some point quickly. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A good book reference book
This book is a great second book on FORTH.If you have never used FORTH or a FORTH derived language before i recommend that you go and read Leo Brodie's "Starting FORTH". Whilst this book makes a great andvery handy reference, most of the explanations are very brief and wouldserve as more of a refresher than an in-depth explanation for the newbie.

A great advanced Forth book.
This book provides a good in-depth coverage of Forth (particularly for users of Forth, Inc. versions of Forth) and is a great follow up to "Starting Forth".It would be hard to find anyone with a closerassociation with Forth than the authors of the "Forth Programmer'sHandbook" since they were the world's second and third Forthprogrammers, after it was invented by their friend Chuck Moore.Forth,Inc. has done a lot to keep Forth as one of the best computer languages,especially for embedded applications, and this book does a good job ofshowing why it is.

A good book on a low visible, but much used technology
Are you interested in how the Java virtual machine works?Interested in efficient Java chips? Are you interested in the boot-up software for the latest machines from Sun, DEC and FreeBSD Unix?If so, then you SHOULD beinterested in Forth.

Forth is the world's premier stack-based language.Some people seem to think of Forth as "aged technology".ButForth's strength is in the ability to continually re-create itself.Forexample, "object oriented" features can be added to a Forthcompiler without having to re-write the compiler itself.Java has sparkedrenewed interest in Forth technology because of its VM.If you read theJava VMmanual it reads like a Forth text.For thisreason chipsdesigned to run Forth also turn outthe be the fast "Javachips".Also the recent "plug and play" solution for Sunhardware is written in Forth.So if you want to write devicedrivers forSun workstations you need to know Forth.

Ok, enough about the language,now about the book. The "Forth Programmer's Handbook" is probablythe best book on Forth since the classic "Starting Forth" by LeoBrodie.This book differs from "Starting Forth" in quite a fewways though. Starting Forth was written with a strong emphasis on"easing the novice programmer" into programming using Forth as amodel.The "Forth Programmer's Handbook" lacks the 'cutegraphics' of Starting Forth.It also starts out with an in depth discussion of the Forth VM.(Starting Forth puts this off until severalchapters later.)Also this new book has updated language features in it,such as a description of exception handling and ofdynamic memorymanagement.Also there is a good discussion on using assembler from Forth. While this is definitely not new, it's more in depth than the example inStarting Forth.

If there is anything "missing" in this bookit's some more concrete examples.There is a short "embedded washingmachine controller" example which seems to be an elaboration of anexample from "Starting Forth".But there is nothing in there asin depth as Starting Forth's "3 1/2 examples".(Which consistedof a languagegenerator, a flat-file database, a simplecalculator, and apartial implementation of an assembler.)The Forth Programmer's handbookdid allude to the IEEE OpenFirmware standard in its "ProgrammingStyle" section, but I was hoping for perhaps a device driver writtenfor OpenFirmware?Forth Inc, the publisher of this book, has been involvedin some interesting projects including a robot arm for NASA.I know thatsome of that code is probably covered by "non-discloseragreements" but some discussion of how Forth helped solve thoseproblems would be nice.Also there wasno discussion of object-orientedtechniques in Forth.This is understandable because there arevariousOOForth implementations out there.Still a discussion on OO and Forthwould be welcome.

Overall its a very good book on a very underatedtechnology. ... Read more

Product Description
The purpose of this book is to present the technology requied to develop hardware and software for embedded controller systems at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Included in the book are hardware schematics of 8051 family development systems (single board and bussed 8051 microcontroller). Source code for both the 8086 and 805 family FORTH operating systems is published in the book. Binary images of the opeating systems can be generated from teh source code using the metacompiler also contained in the book. The book can be seen as a "toolbox" includingg all the necessary hardware and software information to be used in constructing 8051-based controller systems.
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Product Description
Serious users of Forth will be aware of the critic's jibe that the language encourages "write-only" programming.Dick Pountain shows in this book how this description might soon become outdated: a systematic approach to building data structures can result in reusable, debugged and tested modules of code.Whether you are an enthusiastic amateur or a professional involved in new and complex instrument control, or whether you use a home computer or a large and powerful one, every Forth programmer and implementer should read this book.
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Product Description
FORTH has acquired an undeserved reputation for being difficult to learn, but it is actually quite an easy language to master if you start with the basics and go on from there. Written for the programming beginner, this book does just that; you need no previous experience. Each chapter introduces some new FORTH concepts and illustrates each one with examples, most of which relate to the payroll program example used in this book. Other FORTH examples can be found in Appendix A. On completion of this book, you will have a basic working knowledge of FORTH, and you should be ready to move on to intermediate-level programming in FORTH. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

As good as Starting Forth
This book draws you in slowly but surely. It's thorough - and at the half way mark I'm really hooked ! There aren't as many differences between the current ANS Forths and the Standard-79 covered in this book - and even then they are easily resolved.

The style is perhaps not as entertaining as "Starting Forth" by Brodie, but very pleasant reading all the same. If you can find it, get it ! ( Beginner's / Intermediates )

Excellent Concise Guide to FORTH!
If you are a dabbler in FORTH, and you are looking for a good quick reference book, *this is the one!*
The Complete FORTH gives you everything you need to get started.There are easy-to-follow diagrams, well-written explanations, and even a handy reference card!
Many code examples are provided to help you experiment with this often misunderstood and always underestimated programming language! ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Forth, Postscript, Factor, Cat, Hartmann Pipeline, Joy, Colorforth, Concatenative Programming Language, Abundance, Gforth, Pforth, Onyx. Excerpt:Paradigm : stack Abundance is a Forth -inspired programming language for DOS , created by Roedy Green . History Roedy Green implemented Abundance in 1981 as a platform for data entry and management , as part of the volunteer work he was doing for The Hunger Project in Canada. The name is a reference to the goal of "serving charities working to create an Abundance of food water and shelter on the planet", and was coined by Esther Palivoda. (Roedy originally planned to call it "Enough".) Jaunting One unconventional feature of Abundance is the use of continuations to implement data entry form navigation, in a process known as "jaunting". Jaunting works by saving a continuation for every data field that the user enters, and restoring the associated continuation when a particular field needs to be made active. This approach allows complicated data validation rules to be written in a simple linear style, while allowing the user to jump between fields in a non-linear fashion. Trivia References (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at The Cat programming language is a functional stack-oriented programming language inspired by the Joy programming language . Joy and Cat differ from most functional languages (e.g. Scheme , Haskell ) and language formalisms (e.g. lambda calculus , combinatory logic ) in that they are based on the composition of functions rather than function application. Cat and Joy both bear more resemblance to combinatorial logic calculi (such as the SKI calculus or the B,C,K,W system ) than to the lambda calculus due to the lack of names. The Cat language was designed with static typing in mind, and as such th... ... Read more

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Chapters: Forth, 51-Forth, Muf, Open Firmware, Stoic, Colorforth, Gforth, Pforth, Bashforth, Reva Forth, Portable Forth Environment. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 58. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Forth is a structured, imperative, reflective, stack-based computer programming language and programming environment. Forth is sometimes spelled in all capital letters following the customary usage during its earlier years, although the name is not an acronym. A procedural programming language without type checking, Forth features both interactive execution of commands (making it suitable as a shell for systems that lack a more formal operating system) and the ability to compile sequences of commands for later execution. Some Forth implementations (usually early versions or those written to be extremely portable) compile threaded code, but many implementations today generate optimized machine code like other language compilers. Although not as popular as other programming systems, Forth has enough support to keep several language vendors and contractors in business. Forth is currently used in boot loaders such as Open Firmware, space applications, and other embedded systems. Gforth, an implementation of Forth by the GNU Project is actively maintained, the last release in December 2008. The 1994 standard is currently undergoing revision, provisionally titled Forth 200x. A Forth environment combines the compiler with an interactive shell. The user interactively defines and runs subroutines, or "words," in a virtual machine similar to the runtime environment. Words can be tested, redefined, and debugged as the source is entered without recompiling or restarting the whole program. All syntactic elements, including variables and basic operators, appear as such procedures. Even if a partic...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=11012 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Forth Programming Language Family, Forth, Postscript, Befunge, 51-Forth, Poplog, Muf, Stack-Oriented Programming Language, Dc, Rpl, Factor, False, Cat, Open Firmware, Mouse, Joy, Stoic, Colorforth, Piet, Abundance, Gforth, Pforth, Bashforth, Z, Reva Forth, Lapis, Millscript, Parakeet, Portable Forth Environment, Onyx. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 141. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt:51-FORTH is an implementation of the Forth programming language for the Intel 8051 microcontroller . It was created in 1989 by Scott Gehmlich of IDACOM Electronics (which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1990), and sent to Giovanni Moretti of Massey University , from whom it was propagated widely. The original 51forth.zip package is available from many archive sites, along with several other implementations of Forth.This implementation is subroutine-threaded, with about 20 words written in assembly language , and the complete system occupying a total of about 8K of RAM. It was cross-developed from a VAX to an RTX2000 Forth system connected to dual-ported RAM accessible to the microcontroller.The sources and documentation are in the public domain .Websites (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at Bashforth is a free Forth interpreter , written entirely in the Bash scripting language . It requires GNU Bash v2.04 or higher. Its virtual machine makes use of string threading .Due to being written in a scripting language , Bashforth runs slowly, but does not need any installation for those who want to try out the Forth language.An object-oriented programming environment is available for Bashforth, by means of the SmallOOPS extension to Bashforth, allowing interactive OOPS programming right from the Bash prompt.More alternatives, which do not require installation, exist, notably jsforth, a Forth interpreter wri... ... Read more