alatz

I also wanted to say thank you for Jonesforth. Using it as a guide while implementing a Forth in 6502 assembly is the most fun I've had programming.

If you're not familiar with Greek myths, I'd start with those. Greek gods and characters are everywhere in the great books. Here's a good (and short) overview: https://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Gods-Monsters-Greek-Myths-eboo...).

Reading the books chronologically also helps. You'll understand more of the references and see how the books build on each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Conversation) e.g. Homer (Ilad) -> Virgil (Aeneid) -> Dante (Divine Comedy).

Modern translations are great too. You can always go back and read more "faithful" ones. Some good examples are: The Divine Comedy (https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Dante-Alighieri/dp/0871...) and The Canterbury Tales (https://www.amazon.com/Canterbury-Tales-Retelling-Ackroyd-Cl...).

That said, the best approach may be: don't worry about it. Sure you'll miss things, but you'll get valuable insights too.

If you want to take the plunge, jhbadger's recommendations of starting FORTH and thinking FORTH are both great. Starting FORTH covers the language itself, whereas thinking FORTH deals more with the philosophy of FORTH and programming in general.

If you really want to get serious, writing your own FORTH, which is a kind of right of passage in the FORTH community, is a good way to learn. While somewhat controversial among FORTH purists (for reasons I don't entirely understand), I would recommend Richard Jones' jonesforth as reference for this: https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...

I was about to write something encouraging people to learn FORTH, but after some consideration, I started having second thoughts.

I really like FORTH, but I think it promotes some subversive/extreme views which can sow seeds of discontent (or at least it did for me).

Much of my dissolution with the business of programming can be traced back to learning FORTH. It showed me just how much is possible if you optimize for simplicity, and it encouraged me to ask the question: maybe the trade-offs in programming aren't necessary i.e. we don't need to trade complexity for functionality? Now that I have some distance, I was/am probably wrong, and they are necessary, but this question still bugs me.

After learning FORTH I enjoyed my job less. I no longer had the patience I once had for the build tool breaking the umpteenth time, or dealing with yet another poorly documented and barely working REST API.

To be fair, this probably wasn't FORTH's fault. Waning enthusiasm may happen naturally as you gain experience in the industry, but it certainly seemed to accelerate the process.

Anyway, FORTH is awesome, but maybe you shouldn't learn it.

Tim Wu's The Master Switch gives a good historical overview of the consolidation of power that happens in various media/technologies.

Long story short, he says what's currently happening with the internet has happened before. New mediums follow "The Cycle", which means they progress from decentralized to centralized.

For anyone who's interested in a detailed look at Sid Meier's history in the game industry from the man himself, I highly recommend this series of interviews from the Designer Notes podcast: https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... It's long (4 parts, each of are 1.5 - 2 hours), but worth it. The interviewer is Soren Johnson (one of the lead designers of Civ4) which makes for some great behind-the-scenes stories/insights.