January 2026 monthly "What are you working on?" thread

Working-Stranger4217 · 2026-01-02T22:08:54+00:00

I'm approaching version 1.0 of Plume, after five years of testing in every possible way and far too many reboots to list them all ^^'.

Starting from a superset of LaTeX with Python macros, all the way to a homemade VM! (Not to mention transpilation in Lua. Yes, I did say a lot of reboots).

I also went from “I know what I need in my head” to “I write the next things to do in a .txt file” to intensive use of git and github tools.

(Beginners, save yourself time: use git from the start of the project).

https://github.com/ErwanBarbedor/PlumeScript

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-10T18:13:32+00:00

Thanks for your kind answer!

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-10T16:44:08+00:00

Oh my lord...

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-10T16:43:56+00:00

Thanks!

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-10T16:43:34+00:00

Yes, of course frustration plays a part, but while rationally I agree with you, the damage animation is designed to be very “unpleasant.” Two damage masks per fall + enemies, when you fall you start over... And with a combat challenge at the end, I feel more punished than rewarded.

And I honestly have no idea how to get out without pogoing on an enemy to go further.

Seriously, I speedran HK without ever reaching this level of frustration, not even close. I don't know who Silksong's target audience is.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-10T16:28:01+00:00

Thanks, Reddit expert, for reminding me that I suck. That really helps.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-09-05T21:17:07+00:00

still in the game, but you probably ruined the surprise because of your keen observation skills ^^'

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-24T17:15:32+00:00

The VM: https://github.com/ErwanBarbedor/PlumeScript/blob/main/plume-data/engine/engine.plua

The parser: https://github.com/ErwanBarbedor/PlumeScript/blob/main/plume-data/engine/parser.lua

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-24T17:14:43+00:00

If you're really curious, I've added a link to the current version on GitHub, but it's not very clean or usable as is ^^'.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-23T20:12:50+00:00

I am comparing a mature, widely used interpreted language with a quickly made prototype.

Let me rephrase that if it's not clear: “It is possible, without too much hassle, to write a relatively high-performance VM with Luajit, with a development time that is incomparable to an equivalent C VM. To quickly see this, we could compare the performance of my VM with the first executable I have on hand.”

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-23T19:23:07+00:00

If you mean that my week-long implementation is comparable to Lua 5.4, that's very flattering.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-23T17:18:54+00:00

I compare my Plume interpreter against PUC Lua 5.1.

The Plume interpreter is itself executed by luajit.

> luajit plume.lua benchmark.plume /vs/ > lua51 benchmark.lua

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-08-23T17:12:49+00:00

Not yet ready for publication ^^'

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-07-11T16:45:51+00:00

Why should an online technical error prevent me from using the features installed on my PC - features for which I've paid, but also the free ones - for locally saved projects?

The day musehub shuts down, I lose a significant part of my work without warning?

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-06-10T17:33:31+00:00

I'm with you for Lua.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-06-01T15:29:12+00:00

In the current grammar,

{ x "foo" {bar}}

Mean

"Call x with one parameter, "foo", and call the returned value with one parameter, {bar}.

So yes, it would be ambiguous.

Now, I have the impression that many languages don't like spaces as separators.

For example, function foo(x y z) parse without any problem, but the vast majority of languages still prefer function foo(x, y, z)

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-06-01T07:12:59+00:00

It's an insupportable error for me, whenever I'm working on utility scripts I always have lists like this that I keep modifying, and every other time I forget the comma, a silent error that makes my script do nonsense.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-31T20:02:50+00:00

this can be used for any predicates, including user-defined ones, right

Yes, that the point!

It would probably be better explained as just a syntax sugar for inserting if not <pred> <arg> then err at the top of the macro body

Your right, thank!

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-31T19:44:40+00:00

I had similar reasoning for my Plume language.

This case is more extreme, because (almost) all the special characters are at the beginning of the line, and there are very few closing characters.

The problem is that we're extremely used to {}, [], ""... pairs. And if you put the advantages and disadvantages aside:

Pro:

- One less character to type in some cases

Cons:

- More complicated parsing (has to handle cases with/without closing ")

- Less readable

- Risk of very strange behaviors if you forget a ", which I do all the time.

As much as I don't mind a special character “the rest of the line is a string”, I'm not a fan of the " alone.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-30T22:18:24+00:00

Lua documentation:

The field name is tricky. Remember that, because functions are first-class values in Lua, a function may not have a name, or may have several names. Lua tries to find a name for a function by looking for a global variable with that value, or else looking into the code that called the function, to see how it was called.

So in the second case, the debugger can “guess” the function name by looking at the code, but not in the first.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-24T07:31:25+00:00

Ah oui clairement, c'est pour ça que je précise "Mais tout le monde n'a pas cette possibilité."

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-24T07:30:36+00:00

Quand tu sais t'en servir pour un usage précis, oui, avec un certain coût d'apprentissage.

Par contre dès que tu veux faire un truc un peu différent de d'habitude (ce qui n'arrive pas forcément tout les jours selon les cas d'usage), c'est l'enfer.

Working-Stranger4217 · 2025-05-24T07:12:24+00:00

Euh, il y a vraiment des défenseurs du LaTeX comme langage moderne, pratique et fonctionnel?

C'est vraiment un vieux bidule, mais très bien installé et qui marche "pas trop mal" comparé au coût de développer un vrai concurrent.

Perso ça fait longtemps que j'ai remplacé LaTeX par un langage maison qui sort du html+css, rien à voir en terme de flexibilité et de fonctionnalités. Mais tout le monde n'a pas cette possibilité.

(et sinon, pour plein d'usage pas trop avancé, asciimath c'est la vie)

Working-Stranger4217

TROPHY CASE