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> What problem was the author trying to solve that they thought the solution was a new language? It could well be a cultural thing: for some people, "creating

> What problem was the author trying to solve that they thought the solution was a new language? It could well be a cultural thing: for some people, "creating a new language" is a serious undertaking, but for others (especially those exposed to Lisp and Scheme), creating a new language is something you might do if you're curious about something. At the end of the day, creating a language just isn't all that hard to give it so much thought.

DannyB2 10y ago
In Lisp / Scheme, people may create a tiny language to express the problem. Steps: 1. Create a new language in which the problem is trivially expressed. 2. Solve the problem in the new language. Lisp / Scheme are ideal for this. Example: solve some sort of puzzle game. Create a data structure that represents the board, a game piece and a move. Operators upon these. Given a board and a legal move, return a new board with the move applied. Given a board, give all of the possible legal moves (for a particular player if this a multi-player game instead of a puzzle). Once you have that language it becomes easy to use your favorite off the shelf search algorithms. Depth first. Breadth first. A*. Etc. But, this is probably not the same reason to create a "language" as the article. And the notion of "language" is quite different.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  What makes that a 'language' and not just a program? When I create a 'GameBoard' class in an OO language, I don't tell someone I created a new language. Doesn't a language have to be turing complete to be a language?
  - wffurr 10y ago
    Are you sure your GameBoard class doesn't support the necessary primitives to be Turing complete? All you need is store and jump.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - tejon 10y ago
    I haven't used any of these, but my understanding is that Agda and Coq are not Turing-complete, nor is Idris with the totality checker on. Never seen anyone dispute these being referred to as "languages."

DannyB2 10y ago

In Lisp / Scheme, people may create a tiny language to express the problem. Steps: 1. Create a new language in which the problem is trivially expressed. 2. Solve the problem in the new language. Lisp / Scheme are ideal for this. Example: solve some sort of puzzle game. Create a data structure that represents the board, a game piece and a move. Operators upon these. Given a board and a legal move, return a new board with the move applied. Given a board, give all of the possible legal moves (for a particular player if this a multi-player game instead of a puzzle). Once you have that language it becomes easy to use your favorite off the shelf search algorithms. Depth first. Breadth first. A*. Etc. But, this is probably not the same reason to create a "language" as the article. And the notion of "language" is quite different.

cortesoft 10y ago
What makes that a 'language' and not just a program? When I create a 'GameBoard' class in an OO language, I don't tell someone I created a new language. Doesn't a language have to be turing complete to be a language?
- wffurr 10y ago
  Are you sure your GameBoard class doesn't support the necessary primitives to be Turing complete? All you need is store and jump.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- tejon 10y ago
  I haven't used any of these, but my understanding is that Agda and Coq are not Turing-complete, nor is Idris with the totality checker on. Never seen anyone dispute these being referred to as "languages."