We need to be specific here; Acorn BBC BASIC also lets you use inline assembly, and by all accounts, seems to be more powerful than most Forth assemblers I've seen.

Actually, no we don't have to be specific. BBC BASIC seems to be an outlier of the large array of BASIC implementations, especially BASICs on micros. In contrast, the statements about Forth (especially micro Forths) are widely supported. Yet there are certainly examples of Forth that did not have such a facility.

So saying "Forth has one more advantage over BASIC, the use of low level code" as a broad, general statement is perfectly valid.

And the assembler in BBC basic doesn't address the high level extensibility of Forth as particularly manifest by the existent of Forth assemblers. FIG-Forth, as an example, does NOT come with an assembler. It starts as an assembly source file, that compiled in to an operating Forth system. But it's quite possible, without access to the original FIG assembly source listing, to create a first class assembler in Forth, in to something that one would be hard pressed to discern was not "built in" to the system.

This first class extensibility of Forth is vastly different from BASIC in the large, and BBC BASIC specifically. However good the assembler in BBC BASIC is, that's as good as it's going to get. It can't be readily augmented, it can't be readily replaced, it can't be anything. Not by the end user, at least. You get what you get since you can not recreate BBC BASIC readily yourself. The extensibility of BASICs in general is quite limited in comparison to Forth.

I'm very well versed in Forth, having implemented several dialects myself over the years and having personal interactions with a number of significant members of the Forth community, including Moore, Dr. Ting, and others. I'm a regular contributor to the Silicon Valley Forth Interest Group, where my talks are frequently uploaded via Youtube. You can also search this forum for my nickname and my conversations with GARTHWILSON to see how steeped in Forth I am. It is my preferred programming language and programming environment, even today.

I understand that your scope of context was the majority of BASIC-hosting microcomputers. My aim was not to be confrontational, but to enlighten: not all BASIC systems were so crippled as the thesis of the paragraph I quoted implied.

Huh? I thought "Speed of Forth vs. BASIC on C64" was pretty specific.

Again, I thought we were discussing the Commodore 64.

Oh wait, I see my mistake. I inadvertently caused topic drift. This:

Should have been this: