WordLang
| Paradigm(s) | declarative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | William Rågstad |
| Appeared in | 2019 |
| Memory system | cell-based |
| Computational class | Turing tarpits |
| Reference implementation | WordLang |
| Influenced by | Brainfuck |
| File extension(s) | .w, .wl |
WordLang is an turing-tarpit esoteric programming language designed on December 26, 2019 by William Rågstad. It has a meaning-like grammar and intuitive syntax and semantics. The idea is that programs are executed using only one memory buffer that is modified with different operations. Each character has a major impact on the result, which means that typos have a serious significance and are often occurring during development.
It is meant to be a challenge for intelligent programmers, to produce programs which are also fully legible sentences and texts.
Writing a program in WordLang requires a lot of mental calculation and early planning. This makes the language a perfect challenge during game nights with friends or something you can get stuck with and sit up all night with.
Background
The concept is similar to brainfuck, with the twist that each character increases a global memory buffer called the data value, by the characters corresponding ASCII value instead of +, -. There are also no for-loops or multidimensional data structures, but only variables of the data type double.
Etymology
The language name refers to the idea of source code which is also classified as valid words and sentences in any natural language[1]. Therefore, the contraction of word and language was chosen as the representation of the programming language.
Related languages
- Brainfuck is the most famous esoteric programming language, and has inspired the creation of a host of other languages.
- Shakespeare is, according to the Manual, to make a language with beautiful source code that resembled Shakespeare plays.
See also
External resources
Notable implementations
- Original distribution by William Rågstad. (dead link) Includes a cross-platform interpreter built in C#, .NET Core. The interpreter can be compiled with the dotnet CLI[2].
References
- ↑ Wikipedia, Natural language
- ↑ Microsoft .NET, ".NET Core command-line interface (CLI)"