Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if someone made a language where color matters...
You’ll love Piet ( https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet ) then :)
Ohhhh. Did not know that one. thanks!
Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#52Hmm, so ⌊×10[⍥^999] yields a list of numbers, but ⌊×10[⍥^1000] yields an audio clip. That's somewhat unexpected. The ^ above stands for the 3-dot cube dice glyph, which gets eaten by the HN backend, so it's ^ instead.
FWIW that's only the case for the website, in the local interpreter mode there appear to be specific functions for rendering a bunch of numbers as audio/images.
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#53Oh hey, I made this. Cool to see it at the top of HN!
I really like the multimedia output! That's an extremely cool feature.
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#54Reminds me a bit of Cognate[https://github.com/cognate-lang/cognate/blob/master/INTRODUC...]
Think I would like Uiua more if it required a space between terms. It wouldn’t be quite as tacit but it would be easier to read and more flexible — you could have multi-symbol operators.
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#55Oh hey, I made this. Cool to see it at the top of HN!
I want to suggest an alternative encoding/notation where instead of single (very nicely chosen) Unicode codepoints, the operators are single (perhaps less well-suited) printable ASCII characters. This would make the language into its own, human-authorable, bytecode!
Like k
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
If (and I grant, this is a big if ) you are used to them, the symbolic nature of APLs allows to discuss code fragments (and even entire* algorithms) using inline elements instead of as separate interspersed blocks. The difference between scanning algol-style and apl-style code is a little like the difference between scanning history books and maths books: on one hand, one must scan the latter much more slowly (symbol…
APL people often point to the definition of "average" as evidence for its economy of expression: +/÷≢ They make the argument "the word 'average' has more symbols than its definition, so why not just use the definition inline as a tacit function?" There's some elegant beauty in this that I'm sympathetic to. However, I think it's fundamentally flawed for one big reason, which in my opinion is the core of the unreadabil…
> Humans think in words, not letters.
That's true. Just a nitpick: it's not about letters, it's about things that make up a word, and many words in natural languages are made up of smaller parts that have meaning.
But people do tend to forget them and just use the resulting word as a unit
Can't think of a good example in English but in Italian the word "alarm" is "allarme" which comes from "alle armi !" (to the weapons!). At some point people used that word to mean you should grab your weapons and then later they just meant it metaphorically. Most people today don't even make the connection between these two words despite it being right in the face.
What would be an equivalent example in English?
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#57Oh hey, I made this. Cool to see it at the top of HN!
The arrows that iterate through the steps is great UX. I'm new to both array and stack based programming and it was pretty intuitive.
How would I go about file i/o and parsing json? I have a data processing benchmark[1] that I'd like to use this for.
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#58I'm a big fan of stack-based languages conceptually, but they always seem to fall flat when it comes to basic reading comprehension. APL has the same issue, as does J. Factor did improve on this a little bit by eschewing the symbol fetish but it was still very difficult to rapidly scan the code for functionality. I'm not convinced the approach shown here is a good pairing with the human brain.
I'm always wondering what kind of people prefer this syntax to more classical syntax
Those iterating quickly on experimental stuff, or simply because arrays are the only needed collection (there are many such problems)
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#59My recent exposure to array programming languages came via a podcast called The Array Cast[1] Not affiliated, just recommending. The regular co-hosts appear to each be experienced with various array languages such as J, APL, etc. They don't get deeply technical, but it's a nice introduction, especially on explaining the appeal. A recent episode had Rob Pike (UTF-8, Go, etc.) on to talk about his array based calculato…
Could you recommend a good starting episode? I know the generals of languages so I don't know if episode 1 is worth the time investment...
My favorite episodes were Stevan Apter, Leslie Goldsmith, Lib Gibson, Rob Pike and Jeremy Howard. If you want to go deep into the concepts focus on the tacit episodes or the ones with John Earnest or Aaron Hsu. There are transcripts with each episode so you can always read if your time is that valuable. https://www.arraycast.com/episodes
Full disclosure: I am on the ArrayCast
Re: Uiua: A minimal stack-based, array-based language
#60My recent exposure to array programming languages came via a podcast called The Array Cast[1] Not affiliated, just recommending. The regular co-hosts appear to each be experienced with various array languages such as J, APL, etc. They don't get deeply technical, but it's a nice introduction, especially on explaining the appeal. A recent episode had Rob Pike (UTF-8, Go, etc.) on to talk about his array based calculato…
Our upcoming episode is an interview with Kai Schmidt, the creator of Uiua. It will be published this weekend. It turns out that Kai is a fan of the ArrayCast and it was his introduction into array programming.