As the author of jonesforth[1], I found Forth to be a great hack and enormous fun to write. However as an actual language to implement things, not so good. It's terribly difficult to write correct code when you've got no bounds checking, only primitive memory management, no types, and having to manage the stack. (Modern Forths fix these problems to some extent.)
It's my understanding that most language research is on safety features, type systems and so on, so I don't know how interesting Forth would be.
Hi! Thanks for jonesforth; I found it very enlightening when first learning about stack languages. I typically explain Forth as somewhere between assembly and C—a Forth implementation is minimal enough that it’s practically a structuring technique for assembly programs, and (like types in C) more for convenience than correctness.
Having spent ~30 years "implementing things" (ranging from accounting systems to large-scale control systems to tiny microcontroller projects) I must say that I have found Forth superb for this purpose. It does take a little practice at first, but as I have also had the privilege of teaching a few thousand newbie Forthers I have found that they can become incredibly productive in a matter of days.
It's my understanding that most language research is on safety features, type systems and so on, so I don't know how interesting Forth would be.
[1] http://git.annexia.org/?p=jonesforth.git;a=summary