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A minimalistic Turing-complete language is usually not very useful. Nobody seriously programs in Brainfuck. It is entertaining to look for corresponding patter
by qznc 10y ago
A minimalistic Turing-complete language is usually not very useful. Nobody seriously programs in Brainfuck.
It is entertaining to look for corresponding patterns between formal languages (programming languages) and natural ones. For example, defining new words is essential and corresponds to procedures. What about templates/generics? I think the concept of adverbs and adjectives comes close. You take a generic word "car" and specialize it "blue car". Natural languages have namespaces, but they are implicit. A jaguar could be an animal or a car depending on context.
- js8 10y agoIsn't the absence of user-defined abstractions the problem here? You cannot seriously program in BF, but you could program in lambda calculus or combinator logic, and it has just two primitives. Maybe if there existed BF where you had a macro system for user-defined sequences, it would be possible to program in such a language.
- klez 10y agoI tried it once, it was called m4bf[0] and it abused the C preprocessor. [0] https://github.com/federicoculloca/m4bf https://github.com/federicoculloca/m4bf
- sixstringtheory 10y agoIf you like thinking about programming languages in terms of spoken ones, check out the book on J, which talks about gerunds, verbs and adverbs http://www.jsoftware.com/help/learning/contents.htm http://www.jsoftware.com/help/learning/contents.htm