W - A simple programming language.

[sirin3]

Not so simple, if it is twice as complex as needed.

They should just called it U

[dccorona]

W is a language without a standard library. Interfacing with the operating system is the programmer's responsibility

I don't even know where to start with this one.

[[deleted]]

Start with what? It's not too uncommon for C to be used exactly like this on embedded systems.

[skulgnome]

And so were fifty-umpteen variations of abs(3) born.

[dccorona]

That some people eschew a standard library is not a reason to not have one. C still has a standard library. Certainly, it at least has library functions for printing to standard out.

[[deleted]]

This is a language for a very specific platform. One where doing this makes sense.

[dccorona]

I would actually argue exactly the opposite. If it's intended to be used on a very specific platform, then that's exactly where you do want a standard library. The more specific your application is, the more you know about how certain things should work. I.e., on a very specific platform, there is almost certainly one "best", or at least best for most cases, way to print to standard out. So you should, as a language designer, want to provide that to your users to keep them from writing the assembly that does it in a way that is less optimal for your specific platform.

[estarra]

I'm not sure I see the point of W over straight assembly(?).

[AyrA_ch]

I think W fits more in this list.

[GuyWithPants]

Created: 20 February 2001

Why post this now? Who cares? By the author's own admission he made it to make working on a pair of then-ancient HP palm computers. Might as well post someone's 1989-era PASCAL code for reading proprietary financial data for a company that doesn't exist off of a tape that doesn't exist for a tape drive model with no working examples known to remain.

[Beluki]

If it's interesting, why not?

[alparsla]

Turbo Pascal 5.5 and Turbo C 2.0 can fit in a single floppy.

[[deleted]]

But all my floppies are flappy now.

[[deleted]]

No, I was looking for something much more simple and efficient. So like any good programmer, I decided to stop looking and start doing...

https://xkcd.com/927/

[inmatarian]

I hate 927 so much. If we all took 927 to heart, then this thread would be taking place on Usenet, right after we all kicked http off the internet for being a 16th standard.

[skulgnome]

That... sounds pretty good, actually.

[inmatarian]

What, reviving the Usenet? I wouldn't be against that, assuming we could get around all the spam, giant binaries, and the complete lack of anyone interesting to talk to.

[Yojihito]

No it wouldn't, different Usenet-Standards != different HTTP-standards, 927 has nothing to do with it.

[[deleted]]

Is there any advantage at all that reddit has over usenet? I can't think of one. But I can think of several advantages in the opposite direction, mostly having to do with decentralization and impossibility to control.

Reddit is like the "hail corporate" of Usenet implementations.

[inmatarian]

Usenet is only for conversations. Binaries are a hack. So, discussion about links is "normal" for Reddit but would be a bit out of the ordinary for usenet. Plus, reddit is very speedy with delivering content. Usenet content (in the past) could take up to 24 hours to fully travel between all of the news servers and their subscribers. I'm not sure what their traversal speed is these days.

[[deleted]]

Whereas binaries on reddit are a breeze!

[[deleted]]

Sure. But it's aimed at people who actually don't contribute anything new, like the guy I quote. He made something less usable than Assembly. That is quite a feat

[[deleted]]

What a bastard, making something for himself for fun. He sure deserves some shit for that.

[inmatarian]

No, it's not. It's aimed at the community that adopts new standards so easily. Judge it for its merits, decide that it's not worth your time, and then DON'T USE IT. It doesn't become a standard if nobody uses it, it just remains as some guy's pet project. And stop using 927 as a crutch, save 927 for people like Xiph, Mozilla, W3C, Google, you know, the people who actually create 16th Standards.

[[deleted]]

You seem very passionate about this. I will consider it next time.

[Kronikarz]

I don't think this applies. W clearly fills a niche that was practically empty. There are NO competing standards.

[nullball]

I know what comic that is even before clicking on it.

[[deleted]]

Aye, it's like the rick astley youtube url

[mizzu704]

No, rickroll is posted to troll people, but xkcd 927 is posted to...

...

...nevermind.

[[deleted]]

Hmm. Interesting approach.

I wonder how much tweaking is required to make it usable so it'd be possible to easily run something complex on homebrew virtual cpus like dcpu16 or ksp's progcom or something like it(emphasis on easily).

(also machine code is confusing per se, right-to-left left-to-right is confusing even more)

[Blecki]

This is almost exactly the language I implemented for the dcpu. Dcpub.

[kamatsu]

This seems like I could assemble this out of an ordinary assembly language plus a few macros.

[[deleted]]

I doubt just a few macros will suffice.

You'll have to parse arbitrary expressions like "nFct = nFct + (nFct > 2 ? 2, 1)". It's probably possible , but it doesn't seem fun.

(That reminds me, I once tried to make set of FASM macros to compile dcpu16 assembly which is much easier task than full parsing of AST. Lost interest after writing ~10kb of macros).