Forth is a THREADED interpreter which is a different animal than say a Basic
Interpreter. It is the closest thing to machine code from a compiler or
assembler as each word points to the next directly in a "linked list" leaving
minimal interpretation necessary.

The main reason for wanting to work in forth though is the power it has. Chuck
Moore the inventor of forth suffers guilt feelings over the little time it takes
to do massive projects for which he gets the big bucks, because of the ease and
speed of forth programming. But that only comes after you understand it inside
and out. I'm not anywhere near that in my understanding of forth.

Each program becomes its own forth word and eventually you are writing programs
of programs with single words that run at blazing speeds.