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Show HN: Blank – A stack-based programming language I wrote 21 years ago

73 points by aturley 9y ago

aturley 9y ago
I wrote Blank back in the spring of 1997 when I was a senior in high school. I had gotten kind of into a programming language called Befunge (https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge), and I decided to write my own weird programming language. I'll admit that it was highly derivative of Befunge, but I threw in my own little twists. For example, Befunge programs were written and executed in a fixed 2 dimentional grid, while my language was 1 dimensional and you could add and remove segments from the program. It was the first C program of any size that I had ever written. Blank lacks the inspired audacity of languages like Brainfuck and Whitespace. It has almost none of the playfulness of Befunge. Missing, too, is the outright user-hostily of INTERCAL. It was bad, but so mediocre in its badness that it wasn't really worth remembering for most people. But it was mine. I had never taken a programming class and I'd never really had any sort of adult who could help me much with programming at that time, so this was basically something that I did through sheer stupid stubbornness. The folks on the Befunge mailing list were nice to me and were very polite in the face of my teenage ignorance and over-confidence. In retrospect I probably could have spent the time doing something better, but one of the wonderful things about being young is that you can waste some time exploring.
- pryelluw 9y ago
  I aplogize if it's mentioned in the wiki, but do you still have the source code?
  - aturley 9y ago
    Sadly no, lost to the dusts of time.
- lainga 9y ago
  Just a heads up, the esolang wiki's link to the Blank homepage redirects to the front page of onet.pl.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    Wayback Machine to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20040728081105/http://unefunge.republika.pl/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040728081105/http://unefunge.r...
- hartator 9y ago
  > I probably could have spent the time doing something better, but one of the wonderful things about being young is that you can waste some time exploring. That’s awesome, be proud!
  - dspillett 9y ago
    This is what I miss about my earlier years. Idly exploring is the most enjoyable way of learning, it is very rare I find that sort of free time these days.
Lerc 9y ago
Thanks for posting this. I was looking at adding some form of simple flow control to my stack based texture maker. http://fingswotidun.com/stackie http://fingswotidun.com/stackie This gives me a good insight into how to go.
eafkuor 9y ago
Oh, me too! I wrote this 8 years ago: https://esolangs.org/wiki/BAM128 https://esolangs.org/wiki/BAM128 Although it's much less impressive than Blank :)
smoyer 9y ago
It looks pretty cool ... I tried to follow the link to the homepage (for the documentation) but it appears to be gone.
gkya 9y ago
Not nearly as interesting, but I've written a silly version of brainfuck in the past where you used the command line arguments to write your program: https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/bin/optfuck.c https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/bin/optf...

73 points by aturley 9y ago

I wrote Blank back in the spring of 1997 when I was a senior in high school. I had gotten kind of into a programming language called Befunge (https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge), and I decided to write my own weird programming language. I'll admit that it was highly derivative of Befunge, but I threw in my own little twists. For example, Befunge programs were written and executed in a fixed 2 dimentional grid, while my language was 1 dimensional and you could add and remove segments from the program. It was the first C program of any size that I had ever written. Blank lacks the inspired audacity of languages like Brainfuck and Whitespace. It has almost none of the playfulness of Befunge. Missing, too, is the outright user-hostily of INTERCAL. It was bad, but so mediocre in its badness that it wasn't really worth remembering for most people. But it was mine. I had never taken a programming class and I'd never really had any sort of adult who could help me much with programming at that time, so this was basically something that I did through sheer stupid stubbornness. The folks on the Befunge mailing list were nice to me and were very polite in the face of my teenage ignorance and over-confidence. In retrospect I probably could have spent the time doing something better, but one of the wonderful things about being young is that you can waste some time exploring.

pryelluw 9y ago
I aplogize if it's mentioned in the wiki, but do you still have the source code?
- aturley 9y ago
  Sadly no, lost to the dusts of time.
lainga 9y ago
Just a heads up, the esolang wiki's link to the Blank homepage redirects to the front page of onet.pl.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  Wayback Machine to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20040728081105/http://unefunge.republika.pl/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040728081105/http://unefunge.r...
hartator 9y ago
> I probably could have spent the time doing something better, but one of the wonderful things about being young is that you can waste some time exploring. That’s awesome, be proud!
- dspillett 9y ago
  This is what I miss about my earlier years. Idly exploring is the most enjoyable way of learning, it is very rare I find that sort of free time these days.

Lerc 9y ago

Thanks for posting this. I was looking at adding some form of simple flow control to my stack based texture maker. http://fingswotidun.com/stackie http://fingswotidun.com/stackie This gives me a good insight into how to go.

eafkuor 9y ago

Oh, me too! I wrote this 8 years ago: https://esolangs.org/wiki/BAM128 https://esolangs.org/wiki/BAM128 Although it's much less impressive than Blank :)

smoyer 9y ago

It looks pretty cool ... I tried to follow the link to the homepage (for the documentation) but it appears to be gone.

gkya 9y ago

Not nearly as interesting, but I've written a silly version of brainfuck in the past where you used the command line arguments to write your program: https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/bin/optfuck.c https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/bin/optf...