this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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xkcd #3277: Forth

Title text:

I NOTATION POLISH REVERSE ❤️

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3277/

explainxkcd for #3277

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[–] iocase@lemmy.zip 15 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I've reached the point where I constantly screw up with conventional calculators I'm so used to RPN.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I do an equivalent thing, where I English sentences with German word order say, although English my native language is.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 17 points 17 hours ago

Obligatory joke that if you take the last page out of a German book, no-one will have any idea what happened in the story.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 7 points 16 hours ago

Alternatively, (❤️ I LISP)

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 2 points 13 hours ago

Who needs PEMDAS when you have RPN :)

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 5 points 18 hours ago

My first professional job was writing FORTH for fruit machines. I'd played with it a bit before on the Jupiter Ace we had which sadly never really took off despite being more elegant than the ZX81.

[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

They wasted ) to some shit. ( should have been push next word to X-stack and ) should have been pop and execute top of X-stack.

Then writing (+ m n) would be equal to m n + and (IF (< A B) (THEN C ELSE D))) would be identical to writing A B < IF C ELSE D THEN

But they also got rid of and avoiding CREATE’s extra writes.

[–] hayvan@piefed.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

RPN breaks my brain, I need to refresh myself.

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
3
3 5
3 5 8
3 5 8 +
3 13
3 13 2
3 13 2 *
3 26
3 26 17
3 26 17 36
3 26 17 36 9
3 26 17 36 9 /
3 26 17 4
3 26 17 4 - 
3 26 13
3 26 13 +
3 39
3 39 +
42

Or

3 + (((5 + 8) * 2) + (17 - (36 / 9)))

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, my example was illustrative. The equivalent would simply be:

3 5 8 + 2 * 17 36 9 / - + +

[–] hayvan@piefed.world 1 points 1 hour ago