R3forth: A Concatenative Language Derived from ColorForth

Tiny retro language gets big love — and AI side‑eye

TLDR: R3forth, a tiny ColorForth-inspired language that compiles fast native code, dropped with a clean tutorial. The crowd cheered an underrated creator while asking if chatty AI assistants can handle stack-based code, kicking off a lovefest with a side of ‘can LLMs even do this?’ skepticism.

Retro-cool alert: R3forth, a tiny programming language inspired by ColorForth, just rolled up with a clean tutorial and a GitHub repo—and the crowd’s vibe is equal parts celebration and curiosity. Fans are rallying around the project’s creator, with one commenter lamenting this unsung dev “barely gets any attention.” Others are hyped for the approachable guide: “great looking tutorial,” gushes another. The pitch is simple: a small, fast language that stacks numbers and actions like Lego bricks, compiles to speedy native code, and talks directly to your computer’s guts. No chatterbox console—R3 compiles first, runs second.

Then came the twist: an on-point question about whether concatenative languages—where you pile commands and values in a stack—are AI-coding friendly. Can large language models (LLMs, the chatbots coding your side projects) really track long chains of operations? That single prompt lit up the meta-brain: is this style perfect for humans but kryptonite for bots, or the other way around? The thread feels like a split-screen: nostalgia and craft on one side, future-of-coding anxiety on the other. For now, the community mood is clear: respect the craft, try the tutorial, and let the AI debate simmer while people poke at the included “simple game” example and dream up real-time toys.

Key Points

  • R3forth is a concatenative programming language derived from ColorForth that compiles to native 64-bit code.
  • It is designed for direct OS interaction and targets real-time applications and games.
  • Unlike most Forth implementations, R3forth compiles the entire program before executing it.
  • The tutorial covers core concepts: words, dictionary, stack-based postfix execution, control flow, memory operations, and more.
  • Examples illustrate compilation, error handling, and stack/memory terminology (TOS/NOS, c@/c!, w@/w!, d@/d!, @/!).

Hottest takes

"for some reason barely gets any attention for it" — vanderZwan
"That is a great looking tutorial" — tkdc926
"whether concatenative languages are AI-coding friendly" — tl2do
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