There is no one answer.  It depends on the newcomer.

One problem with assembly language is that there are a lot of machines
these days which do not come with an assembler.  You can buy assemblers
for these machines, but they aren't necessarily compatible with one another.

Another problem is that there are a lot of people that do not know
assembly language.

A third problem is that assembly language is not portable across machines,
and if the entire kernel is written in assembler, porting to a new machine
involves rewriting the whole thing, not just the fundamental code words.

For a *lot* of newcomers, it is more appealing to have Forth written in C!

I sell quite a few copies of C Forth 83 into this market.

Personally, I think that typing in an assembly listing is an utter waste
of time.  It was okay back in FIG Forth days, when affordable computers
were wimpy and pretty much brain dead, and programmers were studly pioneers.
That situation was basically a glitch on the time line of history.

Unfortunately, a lot of Forth "culture" got "locked in" to that very
temporary set of tradeoffs.

Mitch

        Quite true. It also depends on what the author was trying
to accomplish.

        And a very pretty Forth it be, up and running on a Pyramid
under OSx as of two days ago, BTW.

        Well, foof! Currently working on ANS Forth for Amiga, in
CAPE ASM. Allows me to think through everything down to the core.
Excellent exercise, with a bit of luck showable at Detroit.

        Fortunately, Forth culture got locked in to the lonely
Zen of the ecletic programming environment we call Forth. To
accept assembly Forths is heresy. To condemn assembly Forths
is heresy. Follow the Tao ... :-)

                =jax=