I made a programming language with M&Ms • Hacker News Board

Re: I made a programming language with M&Ms

#41

Post by sdwr » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 3:55 PM UTC

willwade wrote: post #30

306bobby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally write like the article on similar write ups, where do you think the AI's learned to write this way from. I really don't get the AI vibes from the actual writing of it

It gave me strong vibes too. It’s the writing style. I’ve seen OpenAI write just like this. Doesn’t mean it’s bad. There’s a few other markers. Note “silly” in quotes and over use if that word. Once would be enough. But also this is very very typical. The bolting and short quite direct and a bit repetitive statements “it absolutely does not solve “dumped a bag of candy on a messy kitchen table and took a dramatic iPh…

Yeah, the execution is stronger than the idea and design choices as well, which suggests heavy AI support

Re: I made a programming language with M&Ms

#42

Post by 47282847 » Mon, Mar 09, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

efilife wrote: post #24

47282847 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ As it turned out, there is nothing special about psychopaths when it comes to understanding or feeling empathy with others. ” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-at-any-a... But maybe it is like so often more about the contradictory definitions of “empathy”, and capability vs. willingness.

How I understand the article, is that they understand why others act in certain ways, they know the mechanism of empathy, but nothing here confirms that they are empathetic themselves. I think this article's conclusion is misleading.

There are many different definitions of what empathy means or how it “feels”. Do you (literally) feel the pain you’re inflicting on somebody else, do you know about it cognitively but not feel it, and how does any of it influence your actions.

Re: I made a programming language with M&Ms

#43

Post by AdieuToLogic » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

mufeedvh wrote: post #26

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great post, thanks for sharing it! When I saw the title, I thought of Lambda Calculus[0] and SKI combinators[1]. Given that there are "only six useful colors", I wonder if M&Ms could be used to implement them. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus

Funny you mention that, because yes, a combinator-style encoding is probably a cleaner fit for the “only six colors constraint than my stack machine. I hacked together a tiny SKI-flavored M&M reducer as a proof of concept: B=S, G=K, R=I, Y=(, O=), and N... is a free atom, so `B G G NNN` reduces to `a2`. Gist: https://gist.github.com/mufeedvh/db930a423fdce8c1d8e495c7a3f...

That is too cool, thanks again for sharing your exploration.

I suppose the only question remaining is if peanut M&Ms are higher-kinded when contrasted with the chocolate-only nullary type.

:-D