I just thought I'd ask...

R

robin

Anyone interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl? The idea is that it would be easy to work with and be
based on using english to code with...ie: all of the keywords would be
english words and writing sentences would produce code that works in
the language.

I can't pay you, it'd have to be free work.

Thanks and best regards,

-Robin
 
A

A. Sinan Unur

Subject: I just thought I'd ask...

Please put the subject of your post in the subject line.
Anyone interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl?

perldoc -q difference
The idea is that it would be easy to work with and be based
on using english to code with...ie: all of the keywords would be
english words and writing sentences would produce code that works in
the language.

I can't pay you, it'd have to be free work.

I see, you head hasn't stopped spinning yet.

Next, you are gonna ask if you should use arrays or hashes to write a
programming language.

*Sigh*

Just learn Perl first.

Sinan
 
A

axel

robin said:
Anyone interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl? The idea is that it would be easy to work with and be
based on using english to code with...ie: all of the keywords would be
english words and writing sentences would produce code that works in
the language.

Why do you want to write another Cobol compiler?

Axel
 
J

Jürgen Exner

robin said:
Anyone interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl?

If you would have omitted the "with me" part, then this offer would have
been much more attractive.
The idea is that it would be easy to work with and
be based on using english to code with...ie: all of the keywords
would be english words

Nothing new there, that's the case for almost all programming languages
already.
and writing sentences would produce code that
works in the language.

That on the other hand is a real challenge. So far parsing of natural
language sentences is still a mostly unsolved problem. If you succeed you
can certainly publish that paper as a Ph.D. thesis. Emphasis on the "if".

Mind if I ask which background you have in compiler construction, computer
or natural linguistic, programming language theory, database design, parser
design, ...(just to name a few)? Of course you don't have to be an expert in
all of them, but it certainly helps to have a solid foundation in at least
some of those areas.

jue
 
M

Mark Clements

robin said:
Anyone interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl? The idea is that it would be easy to work with and be
based on using english to code with...ie: all of the keywords would be
english words and writing sentences would produce code that works in
the language.

Anyone interested in building a bridge across the English Channel with
me? I have lots of lego bricks, with which I've built the odd house and
something that could be a cow, and I'm pretty sure I know where and what
the Channel is.
 
V

Veli-Pekka Tätilä

robin said:
interested in working with me on programming a programming
language in perl? <snip> would be based on using english
to code with...ie: all of the keywords would be english words

Hi,
An interesting idea. If the language will be something screen reader
friendly that reads out well with a speech synth and no punctuation, I'm
definitely willing to at least give it a try as a user. It might be easier
in the beginning to try building something on top of Perl with macroes and
source filtering rather than going all the way and trying to re-invent the
wheel in things like regular expressions. Take a practical test. If you're
head hurts after reading this lex man page, I would seriously urge you not
to consider building a stand-alone full-blown programming language:

http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?lex

This is getting OT but I've never liked Unix man pages myself. Descriptive
words that come to mind include terse, cold, cryptic, lack of examples,
needlessly techy and half a dozen others that I don't care to mention
<smile>.

Wouldn't it be a lot simpler if the output was Perl in the end but didn't
look like it to the user? One way to do it is through the Filter::Simple
source filtering construct. See your

%perldir%\lib\Html\Filter\

Folder for usage information. %perldir% here is a DOS environment variable
that you should substitute with the location of your perl folder e.g.
c:\perl\

Could anyone name an existing programming language that is TUring complete,
not terribly minimal and relies as much on English words and as little on
punctuation as possible? I'm naturally interested both because I doubt the
success rate of this perl project and as inspiration for the syntax.

Regarding the other posts in this thread, personally, I don't see the point
in including snide remarks and or newbie bashing even in messages like this.
It really doesn't help anyone in the end the least the original poster. Sure
I do admit the subject does not convey the body of the message really and
there are not too many details of this language implementation idea. I guess
robin just had the idea and hasn't given the implementation details too much
thought at this point. Stil, a number of projects come to mind that I would
probably never have done had I known how much work they would be. But they
benefited me greatly and I learned a lot in the end, even if the projects
didn't went as well as I had anticipated.
 
M

Mark Clements

Veli-Pekka Tätilä said:
Regarding the other posts in this thread, personally, I don't see the point
in including snide remarks and or newbie bashing even in messages like this.
It really doesn't help anyone in the end the least the original poster. Sure

Robin has a very long and undistinguished track-record here. Any time
spent trying to help him is, unfortunately, pretty much wasted. Many
have tried and failed; most have by now lost patience and given up. Best
of luck if you want to try yourself :)

Mark
 
C

Charlton Wilbur

VPT> Could anyone name an existing programming language that is
VPT> TUring complete, not terribly minimal and relies as much on
VPT> English words and as little on punctuation as possible? I'm
VPT> naturally interested both because I doubt the success rate of
VPT> this perl project and as inspiration for the syntax.

AppleScript has that as one of its design goals, as did the language
that HyperCard used - HyperTalk? It's also something that
Lingua::Romana::perligata accomplishes for Perl, though in Latin and
not English (because Latin's inflected case system does a good job of
replacing Perl's prefix sigils); see
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html.

All are extremely verbose, with either lots of prepositions or
inflections replacing the punctuation. I'm not sure either is a real
improvement.

VPT> Regarding the other posts in this thread, personally, I don't
VPT> see the point in including snide remarks and or newbie
VPT> bashing even in messages like this.

The original poster is not a newbie, at least chronologically; he's
been asking really basic questions for well over a year now, and not
apparently learning from the responses he gets. The remarks are not
aimed at newbies in general, but at one particular poster; whether
they're deserved or not, well, consult google groups for his posting
history and see for yourself. I suspect he's gotten fewer snide
responses because most of the regulars have him plonked already.

Charlton
 
A

Arne Ruhnau

Jürgen Exner said:
That on the other hand is a real challenge. So far parsing of natural
language sentences is still a mostly unsolved problem. If you succeed you
can certainly publish that paper as a Ph.D. thesis. Emphasis on the "if".

What exactly do you mean by "unsolved"?

http://start.csail.mit.edu/
http://www.cl.uni-bremen.de/~stefan/Babel/Interaktiv/

Back to "topic":
If you, robin, succeed in writing a programming language that is a natural
language, and if the semantics of your programming language are the same as
that of this natural language, and if you have a system that acts according
to these semantics, then you have solved the problem of understanding
natural language, made declarative programming a bliss and many linguists
out there unemployed. By applying a bit of indirection, you could use the
Universal Grammar and become language independent. Nice.

Of course, you may want to take a look at formalisms for natural languages,
some of which are HPSG, The MP, GB and LFG. For the Semantics-part, what
about DRT, or MRS?
Good luck

Arne Ruhnau

;)
 
C

ChrisO

Arne said:
What exactly do you mean by "unsolved"?

http://start.csail.mit.edu/
http://www.cl.uni-bremen.de/~stefan/Babel/Interaktiv/

Back to "topic":
If you, robin, succeed in writing a programming language that is a
natural language, and if the semantics of your programming language are
the same as that of this natural language, and if you have a system that
acts according to these semantics, then you have solved the problem of
understanding natural language, made declarative programming a bliss and
many linguists out there unemployed. By applying a bit of indirection,
you could use the Universal Grammar and become language independent. Nice.

Of course, you may want to take a look at formalisms for natural
languages, some of which are HPSG, The MP, GB and LFG. For the
Semantics-part, what about DRT, or MRS?
Good luck

To say nothing of some of the Lingua modules already written in Perl.
Some of which even allow you to program in Perl quite well by using Latin.

-ceo
(Not Caesar E. Octavius)
 
R

robin

well, thanks for all the replies. I've given up on the idea for now
since I'm not even close to the level I need to be to get the language
programmed.
I might try it at a later time.
Peace,
-robin
 

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