BASIC, especially the Microsoft dialect, became the dominant language for microcomputers because it would fit in a tiny space, e.g. 4k. For that matter it was big in the minicomputer age because it was used in multitasking systems that weren't that big. Circa 1980 my high school had a PDP-8 which had three terminals and could run a three user BASIC with just 32k 12 bit words.

There weren't a lot of languages which would fit in a tiny space, but FORTH was one of them. Like LISP it's a language where you can (1) implement the language without any kind of recursive parser and (2) write control structures in the language itself because each "word" in forth has both a run-time and compile-time interpretation.

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pjmlp 3 days ago | parent [-]

Original BASIC did not fit into tiny space, that is why while Dartmouth BASIC always compiled into machine code before execution, everyone that learnt BASIC in 8 bit systems thinks it was originally interpreted and compilers only came later, which was the compromise to make it fit into a few KB.

Jupiter ACE had its followers, and it was common to see ads on Your Sinclair and similar magazines for ROM replacements using Forth instead of BASIC.

	▲	PaulHoule 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That PDP-8 BASIC was a miracle of shoehorning as was everything else on the PDP-8. My favorite minicomputer BASIC that I got to use was on RSTS/E on the PDP-11 which had split 64k address spaces for code and data and used fairly advanced compilation techniques. Roughly the RSTS/E experience was like having your own Apple ][ but with a hard drive and a little more oomph. I grew up in New Hampshire right next door to DEC's headquarters in Massachusetts and there were DEC minicomputers everywhere. Microsoft had a compiled BASIC (like run a compiler, not compile interactively like Microware's BASIC09) on CP/M for the Z-80 which was a much better compiler target than the popular 6502. I wrote a FORTH for the TRS-80 Color Computer using the OS-9 operating system which had maybe 2000-3000 lines of assembly code. FORTHs at the time often did block I/O directly to the disk but OS-9 had an API to access files that was pretty similar to Unix and my FORTH exposed that.