2 ms·

Thanks! A big part of the idea is representing data flow, I don't think that makes as much sense with a concatenative language where things are irregularly mov

by hcs 9y ago

Thanks! A big part of the idea is representing data flow, I don't think that makes as much sense with a concatenative language where things are irregularly moving on and off the stack. You'd have to show the relation of words to the stack, somehow, or rework it to be centered around control flow. I have only a passing knowledge of Forth, though, more modern concatenative languages might have a different texture. I did, however, take the RPN approach, which is why operations appear after/below their operands, which has always seemed more natural to me.

vanderZwan 9y ago
> I did, however, take the RPN approach Hah! I feel dumb for not noticing this now :) Regarding concatenative languages, for most words you how many elements of the stack it consumes and then drops back on the stack, so those should be easy. You're right that when that varies things get complicated. Not sure how to address that - perhaps manual annotations? But would it still be worth it then? I suspect something like Joy[0] or Cat[1] would be easier to handle though, being a more predictable, functional language. Kitten[2], while a lot cooler and the only one still being actively developed, requires type annotations, so would probably a pain to write out. BTW, sticking to the topic of programming language input (even though this interface is more general than that) if you add some kind of support for often and recently used keywords (kind of like the predictions in mobile soft-keyboards) that could save a lot of typing too! Maybe have a top three of both, one on the left, the other on the right. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120723021444/http://www.cat-language.com https://web.archive.org/web/20120723021444/http://www.cat-la... [2] http://kittenlang.org/ http://kittenlang.org/

by hcs 9y ago

vanderZwan 9y ago

> I did, however, take the RPN approach Hah! I feel dumb for not noticing this now :) Regarding concatenative languages, for most words you how many elements of the stack it consumes and then drops back on the stack, so those should be easy. You're right that when that varies things get complicated. Not sure how to address that - perhaps manual annotations? But would it still be worth it then? I suspect something like Joy[0] or Cat[1] would be easier to handle though, being a more predictable, functional language. Kitten[2], while a lot cooler and the only one still being actively developed, requires type annotations, so would probably a pain to write out. BTW, sticking to the topic of programming language input (even though this interface is more general than that) if you add some kind of support for often and recently used keywords (kind of like the predictions in mobile soft-keyboards) that could save a lot of typing too! Maybe have a top three of both, one on the left, the other on the right. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_(programming_language) [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120723021444/http://www.cat-language.com https://web.archive.org/web/20120723021444/http://www.cat-la... [2] http://kittenlang.org/ http://kittenlang.org/