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The Shakespeare Programming Language

Posted by michael on from the civil-blood-makes-civil-hands-unclean dept.

Erik Tjernlund writes: "Oh, where art thou my lovely new programming language? Stop fiddling around with those perl magnets and use a real poetic computer language: The Shakespeare Programming Language. Not a compiler, but it converts to C. Cool 100+ line Hello World example. Amazing what CompSci-students can create when they really should do real work."

6 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. why not code in Grunting Neanderthal? by perdida · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Shakespeare used the common language of his day. Like The Sopranos, Shakespeare's oevure is meant to be a big hit.

    His writing is not a language or a diction or a dialect unto itself, but to combine the ways of speaking of the poor and rich playgoers of the Elizabethan time. It's the original accessible style, and that is why 15 year olds can understand, and dig, Romeo and Juliet today.

    However, this "speak your mind" crap de-shakespearizes the writing anyway. The topics may be shakespearean, but the diction is a geek-ized bastardization of Elizabethan speech.

    This era's English is as complex as our own. The best way to code in such a language understandably is to write simple prose.

    For coding, you need a more modular language, something less complex. The semi-linguistic grunts and signs of a Neanderthal, or Koko the signing ape,may be more useful. You would get compilable code, due to a simpler logix, and the Neanderthal observer would still understand the meanings.

    --
    Goat sex free since 2001
    1. Re:why not code in Grunting Neanderthal? by majcher · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You must have missed Ook, a language designed for orangutangs.

  2. Any CSS descrambling software in Shakespeare? by Mark+Gordon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Assuming this isn't a complete joke...

    David Touretzky would probably get a kick out of this language, since it could lead to a dramatic rendition of a CSS descrambler.

  3. Shakespeare is a good start. Now let's try others. by alewando · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Elizabethian English is a good proof of concept, but we should build on this success with other more practical languages.

    Natural-language programming has had its ups and downs over the year. Some will recall Hypertalk, for example, as the language the original Myst game was programmed in. Only some will recall, however, inasmuch as it never got terribly far off the ground. Other natural languages haven't faired much better.

    My contention, however, is that these efforts have not failed because the idea of natural-language programming is somehow fundamentally flawed. Nay, the problem is that we're busy trying to implement the wrong language: English. English may be the language lots of us speak, but it's simultaneously too imprecise to permit of exacting programming and too verbose to allow structures to be implemented quickly and cleanly.

    Tok Pisin would make a much better natural language to implement. It has several important advantages over English:
    1. Simple grammar
    2. English-based lexicon for backwards vocabulary compatibility
    3. Full extensibility, owing to its pidgin origins.

    As yet, a language like Tok Pisin would encounter much opposition among programmers and speakers in the population at large unaccustomed to change, but it's a proposal deserving of serious examination.
  4. Re:Neat, but... by thoughtstream · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...will there be a version letting one write in the original Klingon?

    Well...kinda. I demo'd the forthcoming Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun Perl module at YAPC::NA last June. It will hit the CPAN in a few weeks time.

    With it you'll be able to implement programs like Eratosthenes' well-known "Death Challenge for Primes" in the original Klingon:


    #! /usr/bin/perl

    use Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun;

    ###### mI'wa'DIchvaD 'eratoSHeneS HeghqaD #####

    <mI' tIn law': > yIghItlh!
    mI'tInwIj laDDaqvo'Hal yIlaD nob!
    mI'wa'DIchmeywIj cha' mI'tIn chen nob!
    {
    mI'wa'DIchmeyvaD { 'oH gheD chuv! } mI'wa'DIchmey tIwIv yInob!
    gheD <<\n>> ghItlh!
    } gheDvaD mI'wa'DIchmeyvaD yInIH yInob teHtaHvIS!


    Damian
  5. This is weird! Weird! Weird, I say! by WWWWolf · · Score: 3, Interesting
    You know, just yesterday I fixed some table generation problems in this small program of mine. I commented the offending piece of code better, adding silly comments like "Dramatis Personae" before the variable declarations and stuff like "I Act" before each part of the code...

    ...and next day, someone has Shakespeare Programming Language in Slashdot.

    Weird. Really weird.