Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deserve a new revisit?

Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by lyuhdev on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:17AM (#50388819)

I wonder if there are any modern languages that would be particularly interesting to make specific hardware for. The only example I know of is the one that runs Java bytecode.

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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by RetroTechie on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:14PM (#50395231)

Add Forth to your list. There's 1 or 2 CPU's out there that came with a Forth engine in hardware (iirc). And there's some chips heavily optimized to run Forth systems (see eg. GreenArrays GA144. Sadly seems to be defunct these days?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GA144

As for your original question: you might want to have a look at languages that overlap the border between 'traditional' PLs, and hardware description languages. Or hardware/software co-design, and tools used in that field.

> The only example I know of is the one that runs Java bytecode

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle

Probably implemented in billions of ARM cores out there. Unsure how much use it sees though.

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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by sargstuff on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:22PM (#50448691)

Multiply in Go on a forth machine!

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