Forth in the commerical embedded marketplace ?

[peterjak]

There seems to be no quality forums for Forth and the alt.lang group itself is a real turn-off. However, when I started this group years ago the main problem is still the same problem, that any Forth forums are mainly concerned with standards and PC Forths, yet the real strength of Forth has always been in control applications which is the domain of microcontrollers, not PCs. So there is nowhere I can post this except here.

Yesterday I was talking to a new client and when he asked me which languages do I code in, and I timidly admitted that I use this little known language called "Forth". FORTH! he roared, and while I was taken aback he went on to say that he didn't think anyone programmed in Forth anymore, but ...... he always loved Forth for industrial control applications. My alarm was allayed.

Well the thing is, we sometimes think "nobody" else uses Forth, but so many times I have come across people or hear of people who use Forth in a commercial product, but don't advertise it. After all, why should you? The truth is I have Forth buried in so many products in so many different markets and with different types of MCUs, right from the humble 8-bit to the 32-bit and even now I am working on 64-bit RISC-V Forth as well.

What about you? What stories can you tell or know of? What Forth do you use and what features do you see that would be welcome? How do you feel about "the" standards?

I am posting this on my Tachyon Forth Source Forge page as well. Hopefully you Forthers  will come out of the woodwork and "squeak up"! :)