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The Om Programming Language

om-language.com

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Re: The Om Programming Language

#71

Post by fcatalan »

fud101 wrote: post #55
dirk94018 wrote: post #49

Aren't LLMs supposed to write machine code directly, no more programming languages at all, any day now? Joking aside, programming languages are a good mental exercise. Forth was my first language after assembly. Didn't like the stack juggling and ended up using its macro assembler more and more, it became something else, conventions over code I suppose, like what to keep in registers. Forth (and Unix) got the composa…

I'm still waiting to see the first show HN I made a language designed for LLMs to write programs better.

A few days ago I asked Claude what kind of language it would like to program in, and it said something like Forth but with static typing, contracts, and constraint solving, implemented on the Erlang BEAM.

So I have been prodding Claude Code for a few sessions to actually do it. It's a silly experiment, but fun to watch. Right now it's implementing a JSON parser in the generated language as a kind of milestone example.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#72

Post by verdverm »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #60
fuzztester wrote: post #59

Let's have more programming language posts (even about "retro" ones like Icon, SNOBOL, Bliss, MUMPS, etc.), guys. And less about AI topics. Om. https://emojipedia.org/om https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om

if everyone on HN started downvoting all the AI posts (atleast the slop ones) it would cut down submissions by half

I think it's going to take some time for the reality of ns;nt and the disappointments to sink in. They need to learn that one cannot "claw" their way to a money machine.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#74

Post by dmit »

pgt wrote: post #25

Would recommend placing example language syntax above the fold. Was tough to have to scroll halfway down the entire site to see any syntax. Nobody cares about the EBNF syntax until they have a feel for the language.

Alt opinion: syntax is the least important part of a programming language. I can't wait for the day someone invents one where it's defined entirely as an AST (with the S standing for Semantic). Just bring your own weird syntax.

I guess Unison is the closest to this platonic ideal right now? https://github.com/unisonweb/unison/issues/499

Re: The Om Programming Language

#75

Post by geocar »

dmit wrote: post #74
pgt wrote: post #25

Would recommend placing example language syntax above the fold. Was tough to have to scroll halfway down the entire site to see any syntax. Nobody cares about the EBNF syntax until they have a feel for the language.

Alt opinion: syntax is the least important part of a programming language. I can't wait for the day someone invents one where it's defined entirely as an AST (with the S standing for Semantic). Just bring your own weird syntax. I guess Unison is the closest to this platonic ideal right now? https://github.com/unisonweb/unison/issues/499

I completely agree: If it is ugly-as-sin-but-useful I will learn it.

The aesthetic of mathematics as it appears in journals is I think questionable, but undeniably convenient for communication, so it is every language making the case that you (dear reader) can say something very complicated and useful in the ideal amount of space.

"Hello world" isn't that: That's the one program everyone should be able to write correctly, 100% of the time. That's how we can talk about brainfuck as exercise, but APL is serious.

Or put another way, even if seeing a new kind of "hello world" excites dear reader, it's probably not going to excite me, unless it's objectively disgusting.

What Om does here is exactly right for me: It tells me what it is, and makes it easy for me to drill down to each of those things to figure out what the author means by that, and decide if I am convinced.

I mean, that's the point right? I'm here trying to learn something new and that requires I allow myself to be convinced, and since "hello world" is table-stakes, seeing it can only slow my ability to be convinced.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#76

Post by klibertp »

dented42 wrote: post #43
robotresearcher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overlooked the examples. They might not satisfy you, but there are examples.

To be fair, the examples are extremely easy to overlook. They are also, to put it delicately, not the most helpful.

The examples are fine for an early-stage poc project like this one. `minutes` with evaluation trace and `[Fold]<-` are illustrative, and if you work them out with pen and paper, you can get a good grasp on the main ideas of the language. That you have to search for them on a page that looks like a slightly-formatted README instead of having a nice scrollable with syntax-highlighted snippets at the top is because this IS a slightly-formatted README - and that's also completely fine at this stage. What's important is that there are a few interesting concepts there and that it was published. Even if this one fizzles, as 99.999% of languages do, that doesn't matter if some other language down the line gets inspired by those concepts.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#77

Post by muvlon »

I get the feeling there is something interesting here, but the website seems myopically focused on syntax. It doesn't really tell me what this language is good at or how you'd expect people to use it.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#79

Post by pjmlp »

dmit wrote: post #74
pgt wrote: post #25

Would recommend placing example language syntax above the fold. Was tough to have to scroll halfway down the entire site to see any syntax. Nobody cares about the EBNF syntax until they have a feel for the language.

Alt opinion: syntax is the least important part of a programming language. I can't wait for the day someone invents one where it's defined entirely as an AST (with the S standing for Semantic). Just bring your own weird syntax. I guess Unison is the closest to this platonic ideal right now? https://github.com/unisonweb/unison/issues/499

I have an idea, maybe we could represent that AST as parenthesis.

Re: The Om Programming Language

#80

Post by nivertech »

linguistics__ wrote: post #73
nivertech wrote: post #70

Om = Forth + Tcl ? We've already seen Forth + Lisp What's next? Lisp + Tcl ? Or maybe: Lisp + Forth + Tcl ? ;)

Forth + APL: Uiua

There are also APL + Lisp variants, like April, or even q from kdb+/q (kinda like Lisp but without parens).

---

The APL programming language (a subset thereof) compiling to Common Lisp.

https://github.com/phantomics/april

APL and LISP—should they be combined, and if so how?

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800136.804474

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