The Forth Language [Byte Magazine Volume 05 Number 08] (1980) (opens in new tab)

During one of those awkward moments when only me and the CTO showed up on time for a meeting, he tried to fill the awkward silence by asking what I was working on.

I told him about building wireless moisture sensors and putting them in my houseplants. When the master controller, written in FORTH, senses one is too dry, it lights up an LED telling me which one should be watered.

He asked me why FORTH. I told him, "If it's good enough for deep space probes, it's good enough for houseplants."

Then everyone else showed up and I haven't had to speak to him again.

Needs to be here, from fortune(6):

> THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH

> ....

> The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language.

FORTH got me my first paid programming work in 1981: a management suite for a water company, with customer accounting and river water-flow checks (reported in a synthesized voice)! A fun project for which I home-rolled the FORTH interpreter, thanks to a book "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by R.G. Loeliger.

I remember when acorn user (a bbc microcomputer magazine) had an article on forth. I got enthusiastic about the idea but there was no real way to get a forth interpreter back then. I did play around with interpreting rpn expressions in basic, though probably not very efficiently :)