On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 10:35:42PM +0100, Ethan A. Gardener wrote: > > a sort of operating system where the primary interface to all tasks is > a Forth interpreter.
I think we've talked about this in another venue some years back, but I often thing of the OpenFirmware implementation used by the OLPC XO-1 laptop. Instead of a BIOS or UEFI or linux trash in their stead, the system was managed by an OpenFirmware installation, much of which was written in Forth, and whose primary interface was a Forth shell. This environment had complete access to the hardware of the system, which was used by the project to create really comprehensive hardware diagnostics tools. I mostly used it for screwing around, but it was fairly complete; it supported the wifi hardware and the webcam, and I often thought I'd like a computer that just booted into this environment and stayed there. I'm glad to hear you're still experimenting along these lines. There's a lot of value in a system whose primary interface is the programming environment. I work with computers because of the Commodore VIC-20... and I wonder if I'd have ever given a damn about the field if my first exposure to computers involved a Modern User Experience. khM
