The set of words available after Miniforth boots is quite bare-bones. One reader even claimed that, since there’s no branches, it is not Turing-complete, and therefore not worthy of being called a Forth! Today is the day we prove them wrong.

Two Spectrum stars go Forth

Modern Forth language systems store code in files. Older systems used 1024-character blocks of Forth code and a block editor for creating and editing code.

Could you write an assembler with a smooth, backward-compatible path from raw binary (or, say, hexadecimal or octal) code up to a reasonable macro-assembler programming environment? Could it be smaller than existing assemblers? Maybe, but it’s much easier to make a wrong turn and fall into the Turing tarpit.