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Over the Shoulder 1 - Text Preprocessing in Forth

Andreas Wagner · 25.2K views · 2014-02-23 · 1:06:26

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Overview

Samuel Falvo II live-codes a text preprocessor and blog engine in Forth over about an hour. It shows Forth's dictionary being snapshotted and restored in place of mutation, and how a small Forth system gets real work done.

On Hacker News

Cited as a concrete look at Forth in action, including its snapshot/restore dictionary model.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2017–2025

Topics

Functional programmingSoftware practice, open source & careersProgramming language design
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forthtext preprocessinglive codingblog enginedictionary

What people said

thomascountz · 2025-09 · Recommendation

This is a great resource and running in the browser is great for fast feedback. Thanks for sharing! I just started learning Forth a month or so ago, and I found this video from Andreas Wagner[1] fun to watch. If anyone goes through OP's book and find yourself wanting to see Forth in action, I recommend the video. [1]: [VIDEO]

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pointfree · 2019-07 · Reference

"Over the Shoulder 1 - Text Preprocessing in Forth" [VIDEO] - Sam Falvo demonstrates writing a blog engine in Forth.

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brandonbloom · 2017-11 · Reference

Clojure is following in the tradition of lisps that do this right. The important bit is the extra indirection on top-level names. I wrote more about it here a long time ago: [LINK] Also interesting is the other end of the spectrum: Forth. Instead of mutation, offers snapshots and restores of the “dictionary”. See this video: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Andreas Wagner, played through YouTube.

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