Rediscovering Concatenative Languages with Creative Programming
Presentation abstract
The strange and wonderful family of languages known as Concatenative Programming Languages had its golden era with FORTH in the 70s and early 80s, after which they largely faded from the mainstream. Relegated to being of mostly academic interest, we could question whether these languages still have a place in the programming world of today.
The ability to quickly combine things in new ways, experiment with parameters and tweak the compositions is integral to keeping the creative flow. Being the product of a remarkably ahead of its time philosophy of programming, the FORTH way of decomposing problems and composing solutions is a very good fit for creative endeavors.
Are there still things to learn from this strange and wonderful family of programming languages? Can we explore the teachings of Concatenative Languages while having fun being creative with programming? Let's find out.
Stian Veum Møllersen
Developer based in Oslo. A developer that actually enjoys CSS, makes prolog webservices for fun and thinks prototypical inheritance was a good idea. Loves having fun with programming and exploring the weirder side of our crafts relatively short history.
Currently working as a consultant and Design Engineering practice lead at BEKK. Dealing mostly with large scale web applications.