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Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

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91–100 of 120 posts

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#91

Wow, I'm seriously considering adapting this for my shell scripts (with code recovery via mercurial, since I'm weak of will...). Actually, I bet there are already others doing the same, because code deletion in personal shell scripts probably turns out to be an unalloyed good. Consider this: you've got some script that does a sequence of operations using the standard tools. Somewhere you change between imagemagick an…

> somewhat tongue-in-cheek

Somewhat?

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#93

Punished code deserves to be shamed and be made an example of. Vigil should make an image with the deleted code, such as it cannot be copy pasted and has to be rewritten in shame. This idea seems actually quite awesome for a competition. Its truly a dungeon-crawler of programming. Suggested extra hard-mode for short competitions: deletes all code.

> Suggested extra hard-mode for short competitions: deletes all code.

Too easy: then it's obvious you have to rewrite it. Hard mode is it replaces random tiny expressions with syntactically similar but semantically different ones... sometimes.

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#94

illa 'quis et me' inquit 'miseram et te perdidit, Orpheu, quis tantus furor? en iterum crudelia retro fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus. iamque vale: feror ingenti circumdata nocte invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas.' dixit et ex oculis subito, ceu fumus in auras commixtus tenuis, fugit diversa, neque illum prensantem nequiquam umbras et multa volentem dicere praeterea vidit; nec portitor Orci…

Virgil != Vigil

Oops, sure enough. Somehow I read "r"s into that whole Github page! I guess you see what you expect to see. You have to admit though that all its moral language sounds a lot like Aeneas. :-)

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#95

IDK. Implore? Shouldn't there also be beg, cajole, plead, and grovel?

A pie chart of the Vigil development time would show something like:

25% Writing code 10% Reading the traceback documentation 40% Writing the README 20% Browsing a thesaurus for the best words 5% Cursing after Vigil deleted part of the example

I tell you what, trying to get this thing to self-host is... tricky.

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#96

Wow, I'm seriously considering adapting this for my shell scripts (with code recovery via mercurial, since I'm weak of will...). Actually, I bet there are already others doing the same, because code deletion in personal shell scripts probably turns out to be an unalloyed good. Consider this: you've got some script that does a sequence of operations using the standard tools. Somewhere you change between imagemagick an…

> somewhat tongue-in-cheek Somewhat?

Well, from what I gather, the overarching criteria of the contest for which this was develped is "Does it do something novel to advance understanding and execution of software development?" While that kind of focus tends to bring out all kinds of wacky ideas, don't confuse defiance of the status quo for casting off all reason. When there's no shame in it, experimenters needen't rationalize or smooth over their deviation from expected norms.

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Vigil fails to punish a function, does it delete itself? 1. It is wrong not to punish immoral code. 2. You cannot punish all immoral code without a solution to the Halting Problem. 3. You cannot solve the Halting Problem. ∴ Vigil must delete itself. QED.

I'm working on getting Vigil to be self-hosted. There's a bit of a "who watches the watchers" problem involved. But, remember, Vigil only holds you to the oaths you yourself have sworn. If Vigil swears to punish a function, then it should be punished for failing to do so. But if it's given no oath to that effect, then it's off the hook. You may reasonably ask yourself, "well, what oaths does Vigil swear to uphold?" T…

This is the essence of the Hobbesian approach - Vigil is has unlimited power over the programmer's code. The programmer has no claim upon Vigil other than that it enforce morality upon their code.

I don't think you can have turtles all the way down.

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#98

Supposedly an unreleased version of the GHC Haskell compiler had this feature first: https://twitter.com/bos31337/status/116372971509121025

Not hard to get command line switches wrong

http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/145gw8/warning_easy...

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> somewhat tongue-in-cheek Somewhat?

Well, from what I gather, the overarching criteria of the contest for which this was develped is "Does it do something novel to advance understanding and execution of software development?" While that kind of focus tends to bring out all kinds of wacky ideas, don't confuse defiance of the status quo for casting off all reason. When there's no shame in it, experimenters needen't rationalize or smooth over their deviat…

> "Does it do something novel to advance understanding and execution of software development?"

Shit, I probably should have read the rules before I entered.

Re: Vigil: A programming language with eternal moral vigilance

#100
post #13

To make this actually useful, instead of deleting bad functions, it's probably better to make the offending functions throw a special exception when they are called, signaling the calling of a function known to be bad. This way, you can still inspect the code for the offending functions and fix the bugs. Otherwise, the original code could just totally disappear after multiple runs. What good is non-buggy code if it d…

Bah. A virtuous function values its integrity over its life. It will speak the truth, and if that means throwing an exception that the caller isn't prepared to hear, so be it. Bring on the hemlock!
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