As we move up, these may not be all that common. It is natural to assume that at the bottom layer there will be some swap, rot, 2over and so on. I'm not going to word this correctly but here goes: Forth programs are built from the bottom up. I believe the earliest versions would fit in a 1K EPROM (my memory fades.). I could write simple code in Basic to exercise the hardware. Modified in the sense that I added Port and Mem variables and functions. But right after that I brought up a modified version of Palo Alto Tiny Basic. This gave me basic program load and debug capability. When I was messing around with the 8080, Z chips I used to bring up the Intel monitor first. I'm not a big fan of Forth but I do recognize the utility for development work. It is not unlike programming an HP calculator. Functions that already existing were usable from the command line so creating a new test really involved calling functions that already existed with a different set of parameters. Their entire testing operation was built on Forth because it gave them the ability to write code from the bottom up. Forth is an excellent choice for a scripting language! Back in the early '80s, I made a bit of side money writing BIOS code for various hard drives and I spent a few hours at one of the vendors' shop.
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