This book is really fun. I am surprised that Forth never seemed to make much of a dent in education. It seems perfect for teaching programming because there is so little fanfare.
But for the sake of argument, I don't see why Forth isn't appropriate for learning programming.
I started learning programming in 2001 with QBasic. Didn't do "real work tasks" like downloading some files from server or parse a PDF file and upload some of the content to Firebase, but by doing "boring" things like printing various forms of pyramid, maze solver, etc. I'm sure you can do that in Forth.
Well eventually I tried Forth, and still doesn't get it. At least for me Lisp is more approachable, on certain degree :)
It's not inappropriate, it's just never a better choice than languages that are actually used, because then everyone who learns can say "I know X". I know Forth really well but I don't put it on my CV, even though I work in probably the main sector it's still used (embedded).
I personally find this situation unfortunate. It returns us back to learning subverting requiring that something to be “useful” for some arbitrary definition of useful. It’s the same story of the failure of trying to make mathematics or philosophy or whatever appear “useful” or “practical” to students. It doesn’t work because the point of learning is not to directly get you a job or put something n your resume or be “useful”.
