[HN Gopher] DreamBerd is a perfect programming language
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DreamBerd is a perfect programming language
Author : Davidbrcz
Score : 316 points
Date : 2023-06-04 07:07 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd/blob/main/test/test/te...
| ginko wrote:
| > Booleans can be true, false or maybe.
|
| > Technical info: Booleans are stored as one-and-a-half bits.
|
| Technically, ternary values would be ~1.5849 bits.
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| Perhaps maybe values are only _mostly_ represented, such that
| storing a `maybe` will baybe result in true or false actually
| being stored, contingent on the compiler and surrounding code.
| Thus, maybe accurately describes itself--storing a maybe will
| maybe store a maybe.
|
| Perfection.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Sorry to interrupt...
| qsantos wrote:
| Using the word 'DreamBerd' in your project name implies that the
| DreamBerd Foundation does not own your project.
| However, not using the word 'DreamBerd' in your project implies
| that the DreamBerd Foundation does own your project. If you would
| like to keep ownership of your work, please always use the word
| 'DreamBerd' in it. Here are some examples:
| white_check_mark DreamBerdScript (not owned by the DreamBerd
| Foundation - you are free to use this name) x ECMAScript
| (owned by the DreamBerd Foundation - please consider renaming)
| x Rust Foundation (owned by the DreamBerd Foundation - please
| consider renaming)
|
| Maybe the author should actually take over the Rust Foundation.
| dmytrish wrote:
| How many billion lines of code does it compile per second?
| lamontcg wrote:
| The author described it as "perfect", but failed to use
| "elegant", "thoughtful", "awesome" or "empathy" anywhere.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| PRs are welcome!
| ravi-delia wrote:
| This is incredibly good. It maintains the breathlessly approving
| tone of a language readme the entire time, it has incredible
| comedic timing (a lesser shitpost would have revealed that of
| course the file extension was .db right at the start), and it has
| incredible internal consistency. For some reason it was the fact
| that it demonstrates how "files" work by rebinding a const const
| that sent me completely over the edge. Or maybe it was the regex
| describing valid regex labels
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _breathlessly approving tone of a language readme_
|
| What does this mean?
|
| _it has incredible comedic timing_
|
| How does text have comedic timing?
| ketralnis wrote:
| You could read it and then you'd understand what they're
| talking about
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Sorry it would be a spoiler to reveal this to you at this
| point
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Breathlessly approving tone of a language readme: Readmes on
| Github, especially for languages, often have a recognizable
| tone. Look how cool this is! Isn't this so neat!? Why would
| you ever do it differently!?
|
| Comedic timing (in text): Most prose is written under the
| assumption that it will be read in order- ie, from beginning
| to end. For instance, you likely read the word "beginning"
| before you read the word "end" in that last sentence, and
| read the word "to" between them. So for instance, while "a
| lesser shitpost would have revealed that of course the file
| extension was .db right at the start", this superior shitpost
| has text between the start and the reveal. This is analogous
| to how, when speaking, a comedian will maintain awareness of
| pausing and such to drop funny lines at exactly the right
| moment.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Readmes on Github, especially for languages, often have a
| recognizable tone. Look how cool this is! Isn 't this so
| neat!? Why would you ever do it differently!?_
|
| How does that explain 'breathlessly approving'? All you
| said is what it is not.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Sorry to interrupt... I've just realised that it isn't
| breathlessly approving. A better example of breathless
| approval would be the above comment.
| adammarples wrote:
| If you are constantly exclaiming, you are likely to
| become breathless. Exclaimations are signified with an
| Exclaimation mark. Pauses and other timing can be
| signified with commas, dashes and ellipses.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| My apologies. Please take the first ":" of the first
| paragraph and replace it with the following string: " is
| as follows:".
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hey thanks, I'm glad you like it! :)
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Also a big fan of SandPond :)
| pmontra wrote:
| const var scores = [3, 2, 5]! scores[0.5] = 4
| print(scores) //[3, 2, 4, 5]!
|
| Genius! This trivially solves the problem of reading integer and
| floating point numbers from input and inserting them into a
| sorted array. Too bad there are no loops in this language.
|
| (Remember that arrays start from -1.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Loops are a code smell.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wonder what the behavior of scores[-2] = 4!
|
| is. Or, for that matter, of scores[-1.1] = 4!
|
| (Assuming that -2 and -1.1 haven't been deleted.)
| humbugtheman wrote:
| The first one would place 4 at the start of the array. So
| would the second one.
|
| If you did the first, then the second one, two 4s would be
| placed at the start.
| layer8 wrote:
| But arrays start at -1. How would that work?
| humbugtheman wrote:
| You can insert items before the start
| layer8 wrote:
| So it's not invariably true that arrays start at -1? They
| only start at -1 after an array literal assignment? You
| need to update the language description! ;)
| cdcarter wrote:
| const var scores = [3, 2, 5]! scores[0.5] = 4
| print(scores) //[3, 2, 4, 5]! scores[-2] = 10
| print(scores) //[10, 3, 2, 4, 5] print(scores[-1])
| // 10
|
| is how I interpret the spec, but I did not run this
| through the reference compiler yet.
| barnabee wrote:
| Perhaps they start at -1 and proceed in both directions
| leeoniya wrote:
| > Variable hoisting can be achieved with this neat trick. Specify
| a negative lifetime to make a variable exist before its creation,
| and disappear after its creation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMEFROM
| detrites wrote:
| Elegant, concise and simple: const const const
| delete = delete delete!
|
| Cannot imagine a neater form with which to express such a concept
| in another language.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I find DreamBerd to have the perfect antidote to all the
| constexpr/const fetish in that other, non-perfect language.
| gpderetta wrote:
| > Technical info: Type annotations don't do anything, but they
| help some people to feel more comfortable.
|
| They stole the feature directly from python!
| internet-mat wrote:
| I rather appreciate the built-in support for the `fucton`
| keyword.
| gusmd wrote:
| The best gem in all of it is this:
|
| > You can make classes, but you can only ever make one instance
| of them. This shouldn't affect how most object-oriented
| programmers work.
|
| This describes my experience with most OOP code very well.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I love Singletons and God Classes. ;)
| layer8 wrote:
| I think the best gem is the ability to delete paradigms.
|
| As for OOP, a bit more realistic would have been to restrict
| interfaces to at most one implementation.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| scores[0.5] = 4 print(scores) //[3, 2, 4, 5]!
|
| should be [3, 4, 2, 5] imo, between 0 and 1
| Alifatisk wrote:
| No arrays starts from -1 in this case.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| You missed that DB is -1 indexed
| guenthert wrote:
| > All indents must be 3 spaces long.
|
| That's what a former colleague, who shall remain unnamed,
| suggested as well.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Variable hoisting can be achieved with this neat trick. Specify
| a negative lifetime to make a variable exist before its creation,
| and disappear after its creation.
|
| It'd be neat if you could also hoist a var up into the set of
| extant running runtimes.
|
| _Oh, someone on earth already computed a table of rsqrt values.
| Let me try just try using that one..._
| ravi-delia wrote:
| You could do it with 'const const const' if you don't need it
| mutated, but perhaps a 'const const var' would serve.
| jantypas2 wrote:
| A correction on another comment -- this is not a multithreaded
| language -- it's transthreaded-- a radically new concept where
| your code may or may not, run code in your thread, or someoen
| else's thread, without your knowledge. Errors in your code show
| up in their program, and their errors, in yours - see? Now bugs
| aren't your fault anymore! And don't forget the KvetchGPT option.
| It's doesn't so much as complain about your code as you go along.
| It's like pair programming with your manager but you can turn
| them ofF.
| jantypas2 wrote:
| And of course, let's adopt Rust's logic with our new "Borrow
| Nagger", or just "Everything Nagger". When it compiles your code,
| it analyzes it, sends it out to a Reddit group and collects the
| comments and displays them as warning and error messages. No one
| is saying they'll make any sense relative to code, but if you've
| used C++ and templates, you'll feel right at home. Abd of course,
| there's "syntax quality hightlighting", where we highlight your
| code in various colors based on what we think of the quality of
| it. Red = Really bad idea, Yellow, not good, but good for now,
| you'll refactor it later, green, good because you won't be at
| this job long anyway, and black on black or white on white if
| it's actually OK. (Per the comment on refactoring, there's
| probably a note on the pyramids 'Pharoh - yeah, this is a hack,
| but we were in a rush, we'll fix it later. Bandaids for now'
| tuchsen wrote:
| This is great. Usually with the joke programming languages, you
| can get at least one person arguing that "x feature" really isn't
| all that bad, or could maybe be useful. DreamBerd beats them all
| in that regard. It is 100% terrible! I lost it at the lifetimes
| implementation.
| occoder wrote:
| This feature really isn't all that bad!
|
| > To declare a function, you can use any letters from the word
| function (as long as they're in order):
|
| > function add (a, b) => a + b!
|
| > func multiply (a, b) => a * b!
|
| > fun subtract (a, b) => a - b!
|
| > fn divide (a, b) => a / b!
|
| > functi power (a, b) => a * b!
| mysterydip wrote:
| When I first read this, I thought the function _names_ could
| only include letters from the word function, and only in
| order!
| cultureswitch wrote:
| I think there's a hint of a good idea in the type that checks
| strings with a regex. Obviously it's comically impractical
| written that way.
| wisam wrote:
| I don't know, variable decelerations seem to me to be funny but
| useful.
|
| I mean constant constants, constant variables, and variable
| variables seem useful.
|
| I'm not sure how would variable constants be useful.
|
| Also, anybody knows the difference between constant constant
| and immutable data (constant contact constant)?
| cultureswitch wrote:
| It's a rather straightforward dig at C\C++ which work exactly
| like this with `const` variables.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| In the normal case, Alice can write 'const const true =
| false' and Bob, on a second machine, can write 'const const
| true = 7', and there will not be an error. But if Alice
| writes 'const const const true = false', than Bob can't
| reassign or mutate 'true' without throwing an error. It's for
| truly global constants
| nneonneo wrote:
| Come to think of it, package registries are sort of
| "superglobal" in many languages. It's not entirely far-
| fetched to imagine a language in which variables themselves
| can be super-global. Heck, MUMPS global variables are
| immediately persisted to disk and visible to all other
| processes - and that's a real language used in real
| systems!
| ravi-delia wrote:
| But what elevates it is that it's written so confidently and
| buries the insane lede so well that at each feature there's a
| fraction of a second where it seems recoverable before sanity
| kicks in. After, before, and next almost, _almost_ seem smart
| pmontra wrote:
| This feature is not so bad:
|
| > In case you really need to vary a variable, the when keyword
| lets you check a variable each time it mutates.
| const var health = 10! when (health = 0) {
| print("You lose")! }
|
| If it can really be triggered when the variable changes to any
| value it makes it a truly reactive paradigm programming
| language. By the way, could that be hacked to implement loops?
| const var i = 10 when (i >= 0) { do_something()
| i = i - 1 }
| hoosieree wrote:
| Looks a little like FRP.
| epistasis wrote:
| I like this feature, but to really make it pop I would like
| it to be combined with comefrom control flow.
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes, when is the way to do loops in this language. From the
| hidden examples page functi fibonacci (n) =>
| { const var sum = 1! const var i = 0!
| when (i < n) { sum += sum + previous sum!
| i++! } } when (i < 10) {
| fibonacci(i)? i++! }
| ravi-delia wrote:
| And if you don't want your code to loop back by accident
| you can just use lifetimes! Truly an elegant language
| ilaksh wrote:
| Yeah honestly I was really interested in that. Kind of like a
| logic language?
|
| Maybe Prolog is the perfect language.
| mhd wrote:
| Doesn't Tcl's "trace" feature do this?
| llimos wrote:
| The 'previous' feature sounds like a great idea! The compiler
| could even decide which variables it needs to keep track of.
| skykooler wrote:
| I really like the "when" keyword, actually.
| hansvm wrote:
| Also lost it at the timed lifetimes :)
|
| Infinite lifetime is actually useful here and there. I'll
| usually slap an infinite lifetime wrapper around the `requests`
| or `httpx` module when I'm testing out some Python web scraping
| code.
| stefncb wrote:
| I honestly liked the whitespace significant operator
| precedence.
| xigoi wrote:
| Nim used to have that, but unfortunately removed it because
| it was too controversial.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Lu makes awesome stuff, do check out todepond on youtube
| rootw0rm wrote:
| Oh wow, this is awesome
| jheriko wrote:
| could have made a language faster than C in 0.1x the amount of
| time
| tbt wrote:
| Regexression
| humbugtheman wrote:
| There's a PR in the works to fix this:
| https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd/pull/65
| zeptonix wrote:
| Delete
|
| To avoid confusion, the delete statement only works with
| primitive values like numbers, strings, and booleans.
|
| delete 3!
|
| print(2 + 1)! // Error: 3 has been deleted
|
| HAHAHAHAHA
| JZerf wrote:
| DreamBerd is a multi-paradigm programming language, which means
| that you can delete the keywords and paradigms you don't like.
| delete class! class Player {} // Error: class was deleted
|
| When perfection is achieved and there is nothing left to
| delete, you can do this: delete delete!
| deepsun wrote:
| delete = previous delete!!
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Great repo, had a good laugh through the whole readme!
| pledess wrote:
| I feel that the array starting index should be adjustable at
| runtime via increment/decrement overloading for either the [ or ]
| character.
|
| var var meanings = [42]!
|
| print(meanings[-1])! //42
|
| [++! //temporarily change to 0-based indexing
|
| print(meanings[0])! //42
|
| print(meanings[-1--])! //42 (because of the --] pre-decrement)
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Might be worth opening a pull request! Lots of people might
| prefer starting at something more intuitive, like -0 or NaN
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hello! Creator here. This is an open-source project so please do
| submit any issues or PRs.
|
| Please note: I will close any issues without unreproducible
| steps.
| shukantpal wrote:
| > Please note: I will close any issues without unreproducible
| steps.
|
| Surely you meant "without reproducible steps"?
| txbuck wrote:
| Surely you didn't comment before viewing the post.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| No I mean without unreproducible steps.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Alifatisk wrote:
| Double negatives hurts my brain.
|
| The latter could be phrased like this: "Please note: I will
| close any issues with reproducible steps."
| humbugtheman wrote:
| That's not right. Your issue can have reproducible steps. But
| it must contain unreproducible steps.
|
| For more info, please read my blog post "Why unreproductions
| are required".
| CyborgCabbage wrote:
| Funny seeing you here, I enjoyed your SandPond videos :)
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hey thank you! See you round the Pond some time
| ktm5j wrote:
| I really, really dig your sense of humor! Great stuff
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Thank you very much! You're very welcome to dive further into
| the Pond if you want: https://youtu.be/ZMklf0vUl18
| SeriousM wrote:
| "unless" operator is missing to make it complete complete, maybe
| with double unless if unless unless
| cobychapple wrote:
| Needs a `really` operator for scale.
| threeseed wrote:
| It really is missing some functional programming paradigms.
|
| Something that makes (a) you appear smarter than other developers
| and (b) your code so complex it is unmaintainable.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| Make sure to look at the example programs if you missed the link
| in the doc
|
| https://github.com/TodePond/DreamBerd/blob/main/LICENSE.md
| version_five wrote:
| I sort of spoiled the joke for myself because the first thing I
| noticed was that it didn't have a standard license (github says
| view license instead of Apache or whatever). So I clicked on it
| before even reading what the language was about, still thinking
| it was serious.
| divan wrote:
| So many promising ideas for Dart 4.0 to adopt :)
| mysterydip wrote:
| Love the constants. Biggest confusion for me reading modern
| javascript, coming from traditional languages. "What do you mean
| you can change a constant?"
| camsjams wrote:
| You can't reassign constants in JS, it throws an error:
| Uncaught TypeError: Assignment to constant variable.
|
| But yes you can modify objects and arrays of a constant, which
| is not great.
| revskill wrote:
| Is this to blame complexity of Rust ?
| cgh wrote:
| Feels like more of a JS parody to me. Perhaps parodies like
| this are an effective way to reveal our biases. #deepthoughts
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Creator here - it's actually a parody of INTERCAL. I
| explained more on the Future of Code podcast recently:
| https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/064
| zamalek wrote:
| Which is a parody of INTERCAL? Rust or DreamBerd?
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Yes those ones.
| cropcirclbureau wrote:
| That was a fun listen, thanks!
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Thanks for listening! Hopefully that should clear things
| up
| revskill wrote:
| What is INTERCAL ? When will you release first version of
| the compiler ?
| humbugtheman wrote:
| INTERCAL is basically a sequel to DreamBerd. I highly
| recommend listening to that podcast episode! It's very
| enlightening
| speedgoose wrote:
| Also JavaScript, Python, React, R, C, functional programming,
| and probably many others things.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >In case you really need to vary a variable, the when keyword
| lets you check a variable each time it mutates.
|
| The kOS plugin for Kerbal Space Program implements a programming
| language that actually has this feature.
| jantypas2 wrote:
| And now that I think about it, other than negative lifetimes,
| where variables reappear in code after a defined time because you
| might need them again, I propsoe the hidden segments feature --
| with this feature, you can write code, and hide the block
| (something like an invisible #define) so when your coworker comes
| along and tries to "help" by changing your code that you told
| them SHOULD NOT be changed because it actually works now, when
| you run the code with the --no-manager flag, the code compiles
| the way YOU want it.
| 1attice wrote:
| Please send for help. I have rubbed off my face with the palms of
| my hands.
| shevis wrote:
| > Loops are a complicated relic of archaic programming languages.
| In DreamBerd, there are no loops.
|
| Flex
| jantypas2 wrote:
| Please no! Someone may try to actually use this in some corporate
| production model -- I can see the carnage now - the language,
| editors where you can write left to right, right to left, or even
| vertically with an exta cost plug-in, training courses at
| $1500/day -- the horror of it all! Don't forget the vertical
| camelcase variable names where letters appear, not only in both
| cases, but on two lines. You know of course, tehre's a special
| place for you when the mist clears. You'll either be stuck in the
| Bank of America customer care department for eternity, or, be
| stuck in the other Big Red helping to get Larry Elisson's network
| computer workig -- FOREVER.
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(page generated 2023-06-04 23:00 UTC)