RE: Language without a name

I like languages too.  

As for the history, are you sure we're not talking about James Noble's
PLoPD4 chapter? I wish I'd written that one, but James did. I wrote another
language called Ego (which was actually quite similar to James's) about ten
years ago, but I'm at a loss as to how you'd have seen it.

I'm not sure what to say about the code except that I too am partial to
Self/Smalltalk syntax, and dynamic languages. hurl: is a good name for what
one does to an exception. 

I realized the other day that my dog takes somewhat the same approach to
type checking as do dynamic languages. When in doubt, eat it. If it is
indigestible, she knows she'll just cough it back up in a few minutes... 

Are there other amenities in your code that you'd like to point out?

--BF, on the porch with the dog...

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Michael Feathers
Sent: Thursday, 16 June, 2005 18:51
To: [email protected]
Subject: [emergentdesign] Language without a name


Here's a chance to talk about something emergent..  I like languages.  
For fun, I've been writing an interpreter for a new one.  It is sort of 
a prototype-based mix of Smalltalk and Python syntax.  I've had a 
fascination with prototype-based languages ever since I read Brian 
Foote's Prototype Pattern (maybe before) and typed in his Ego interpreter.

Right now, I have a tokenizer that is indentation aware and I'm building 
up recognizers for the phrase structure.  I'm doing it test-first and I 
don't have much of a sense of what the architecture of the interpreter 
will be, but it seems to be coming along fine.  If anyone wants to see 
the code, feel free to ask.  I don't plan on making it a very useful 
language.  The world is littered with those already ;) 

I've been using the folowing example code as a guide while I work.  It's 
code I expect the interpreter to accept. 

false ifTrue: aBlock
   pass

false ifFalse: aBlock
   aBlock value

true ifTrue: aBlock
   aBlock value

true ifFalse: aBlock
   pass

test tests := list clone

test setUp
   pass

test tearDown
   pass

self runTest
   self should: false
 
test should: aBool
   aBool ifFalse:
       self hurl: "bad things"

test run: aResult
       self do:
           self setUp
           self runTest
           self tearDown
       ifUnable:
           e | aResult addMessage: e

divTest := test clone

divTest runTest: aResult
   self should: ((10 / 2) = 5)

testSuite add: test
   self tests add: test

testSuite run: aResult
   self tests do:
       aTest | aTest run: aResult

object slots
   self _

object clone
   result | self slots forEach:
       slot | result slots add: slot
   result


Michael Feathers

>




 
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