5 ms·

Wow this is a bizarre esolang.

by person_of_color 7y ago

empath75 7y ago
It’s not an esolang. It has a long history of actual real production use.
- jheriko 7y ago
  that doesn't stop it being an esolang ... although the code quality of the examples makes it look a million times more like one than it needs to
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >that doesn't stop it being an esolang Actually it does: "An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language (particularly functional programming or procedural programming languages), or as a joke"
    - shaunxcode 7y ago
      Right, and APL could not be further from the definition given that it started as a chalkboard notation for reasoning about array operations!
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Right, and Lisp started as a notation in a paper with no intention of building a language. But nobody would call it an esolanguage. How something started and what it became are orthogonal... I'm pretty sure Jack the Ripper started as a cute baby too...
        lispm 7y ago
        > Lisp started as a notation in a paper with no intention of building a language what?
        kragen 7y ago
        Well, it has some element of truth. The S-expression notation we think of as “Lisp” originated as a contribution to recursive function theory rather than a practical programming language, even if earlier McCarthy was thinking of proceeding by adding IPL-V facilities to Fortran.
        lispm 7y ago
        McCarthy wanted a list processing language. He added list processing functions (which then later appeared in Lisp) to Fortran. He and his team then went on to develop and implement a new language: Lisp. The implementation ALWAYS was based on lists and s-expressions. The paper http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html was published, when Lisp was already implemented, to present some ideas to a different audience. But Lisp already existed by then as a running programming language. First and foremost Lisp was a real programming language implemented on a real computer. http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp15_family/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp15_fam... See also: History of Lisp, John McCarthy, http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf "My desire for an algebraic list processing language for artificial intelligence work on the IBM 704 computer arose in the summer of 1956..." "The implementation of LISP began in Fall 1958 ... These included programs to read and print list structure. I can’t now remember whether the decision to use parenthesized list notation as the external form of LISP data was made then or whether it had already been used in discussing the paper differentiation program." "The M-notation also used brackets instead of parentheses to enclose the arguments of functions in order to reserve parentheses for list-structure constants. It was intended to compile from some approximation to the M-notation, but the M-notation was never fully defined, because representing LISP functions by LISP lists became the dominant programming language when the interpreter later became available." "Anyway, I decided to write a paper describing LISP both as a programming language and as a formalism for doing recursive function theory. The paper was Recursive functions of symbolic ex- pressions and their computation by machine, part I (McCarthy 1960)."
- pjc50 7y ago
  Production use these days is more likely to be J, which you can actually type on a normal keyboard.
  - Jtsummers 7y ago
    It is different to look at, but the editing modes let you type the APL characters without too much difficulty. I spent about 3 months doing a deep-dive into APL last year, it took about two weeks to become proficient typing it (already a touch typist, though). I still remember most of the character positions (the worst part for me was that I use Dvorak, so the visualized keymap is useless since most assume QWERTY layouts). I mostly used emacs, I think the default prefix character was `, but switched it to . . Typing iota: .i. Typing rho: .r.
- vmchale 7y ago
  Didn't Iverson win the Turing award for ALP?

Wow this is a bizarre esolang.

empath75 7y ago

It’s not an esolang. It has a long history of actual real production use.

jheriko 7y ago
that doesn't stop it being an esolang ... although the code quality of the examples makes it look a million times more like one than it needs to
- coldtea 7y ago
  >that doesn't stop it being an esolang Actually it does: "An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language (particularly functional programming or procedural programming languages), or as a joke"
  - shaunxcode 7y ago
    Right, and APL could not be further from the definition given that it started as a chalkboard notation for reasoning about array operations!
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Right, and Lisp started as a notation in a paper with no intention of building a language. But nobody would call it an esolanguage. How something started and what it became are orthogonal... I'm pretty sure Jack the Ripper started as a cute baby too...
      - lispm 7y ago
        > Lisp started as a notation in a paper with no intention of building a language what?
        kragen 7y ago
        Well, it has some element of truth. The S-expression notation we think of as “Lisp” originated as a contribution to recursive function theory rather than a practical programming language, even if earlier McCarthy was thinking of proceeding by adding IPL-V facilities to Fortran.
        lispm 7y ago
        McCarthy wanted a list processing language. He added list processing functions (which then later appeared in Lisp) to Fortran. He and his team then went on to develop and implement a new language: Lisp. The implementation ALWAYS was based on lists and s-expressions. The paper http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.html was published, when Lisp was already implemented, to present some ideas to a different audience. But Lisp already existed by then as a running programming language. First and foremost Lisp was a real programming language implemented on a real computer. http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp15_family/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp15_fam... See also: History of Lisp, John McCarthy, http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf "My desire for an algebraic list processing language for artificial intelligence work on the IBM 704 computer arose in the summer of 1956..." "The implementation of LISP began in Fall 1958 ... These included programs to read and print list structure. I can’t now remember whether the decision to use parenthesized list notation as the external form of LISP data was made then or whether it had already been used in discussing the paper differentiation program." "The M-notation also used brackets instead of parentheses to enclose the arguments of functions in order to reserve parentheses for list-structure constants. It was intended to compile from some approximation to the M-notation, but the M-notation was never fully defined, because representing LISP functions by LISP lists became the dominant programming language when the interpreter later became available." "Anyway, I decided to write a paper describing LISP both as a programming language and as a formalism for doing recursive function theory. The paper was Recursive functions of symbolic ex- pressions and their computation by machine, part I (McCarthy 1960)."
pjc50 7y ago
Production use these days is more likely to be J, which you can actually type on a normal keyboard.
- Jtsummers 7y ago
  It is different to look at, but the editing modes let you type the APL characters without too much difficulty. I spent about 3 months doing a deep-dive into APL last year, it took about two weeks to become proficient typing it (already a touch typist, though). I still remember most of the character positions (the worst part for me was that I use Dvorak, so the visualized keymap is useless since most assume QWERTY layouts). I mostly used emacs, I think the default prefix character was `, but switched it to . . Typing iota: .i. Typing rho: .r.
vmchale 7y ago
Didn't Iverson win the Turing award for ALP?