Teaching Kids Forth: Why I Chose a 1970s Language Over Python
Teaching Kids Forth – Anna Liberty
I chose to teach middle and high school students Forth instead of popular languages like Python or Scratch. My goal was to help them grasp fundamental computing concepts without getting lost in complex syntax. Using physical plates to simulate a data stack, I guided them through building their own art and games in a browser-based environment, proving that obscure tools can unlock new worlds for young learners.
When people know more about computers in general and about making their own software in particular, whole worlds open up.
- 6581
From personal experience, I strongly disagree with the negative comments saying Forth isn't suitable for teaching children.
"Starting Forth" by Leo Brodie was the first programming book I ever read when I was about 6 or 7 years old, after my dad brought it home from work (where they used Forth). To me, the language felt very intuitive and easy to grasp. And Brodie's illustrations helped a lot with visualizing how it all worked.
- jeberle
Leo Brodie's "Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals" is well-suited for any level student. It's quite fun and made a mark on my thinking. It's hard for a postfix dereference operator not to.
- veltas
I really love Forth and spend almost all my free programming time playing with it and I'd never teach it to a class of kids.
- lebuffon
I used Forth to explain numbers in different radices to my grandson.
Being able to interactively try things at the console was really helpful.
It also helps to separate the internal number in the machine from how we display it, due to the different operators to print numbers as signed or unsigned. This is something that I have seen young programmers confuse.
I think another area where Forth can help young people is in understanding some low level details like memory addresses and reading and writing memory. It seems simpler than abstracting it to "pointers", more like assembler but interactive.
- sudb
I doubly enjoyed reading this because I feel like I'm reasonably sure the author never ran this through an LLM because of the "cirriculum" typo.