Homespring – A Metaphor Oriented Programming Language | Hacker News Reader

Homespring – A Metaphor Oriented Programming Language

xeny.net

72 pointsEvergreenTree17 comments

For an example of code written in this language see this hello world program: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/56009

This seems to be the easiest interpreter to get up and running.

https://github.com/quinkennedy/Homespring

`node homespring.js filename.hsg`

Be careful, though. From the spec:

> The sequences ‘ . ’ and ‘. .’ are required to cause a causality paradox in all conforming implementations. As such, there are no conforming implementations.

There are some more examples here: http://bunny.xeny.net/linked/Homespring-Proposed-Language-St...

I'm a little ticked off at how far I had to read and how much time was wasted before figuring out this was a joke. I guess I'm to blame for how long it took.

If I understand correctly Homespring has chosen one metaphor, and you write programs exclusively in the terms of that metaphor. This is not really different from current languages except that the more common metaphor is of a kind of abstract machine, and theirs has to do with salmon moving in rivers (presumably the runtime is largely a simulation of the river, salmon, etc.). And in general metaphor oriented programming languages would choose some other metaphor (probably something strangely concrete), and you would express things in terms of its parts. Is that close?

Yes, I see it as a pun on e.g. object-oriented programming taken to absurdity.

Ever since learning of Homespring I've wanted to create another metaphor-oriented language around a different metaphor. Clearly the learning curve for Homespring is caused by people not knowing enough about fish farming. The right metaphor for most cultures is clearly agriculture.

Heh, I suspect you are correct—agriculture would have been much easier for me to comprehend. I'm also reminded[0] of Slartibarfast's 'Starship Bistromath'; from Wikipedia:

The ship is said to work by abusing the laws of 'bistromathics', which is the specific mathematics of values of various factors in restaurants, such as the bill, number of people attending, number of people said to be attending, number of people who leave and the time they all arrive. In the novel Life, the Universe and Everything, bistromathics is explained that "Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space [...], so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants."

[0] Actually it was my sister who reminded me about Starship Bistromath after I told her about this, not my own recollection.

darmok and jalad at tanagra... darmok and jalad! at tanagra!

This is what I thought of too. Haha. Thanks.

Original creator here. I hadn't thought about Homespring in years until a friend tipped me off about this post. Since it seems like people are still interested in this monstrosity, I created a web page with links to all the Homespring-related stuff that I am aware of: http://jeffreymbinder.net/208/homespring

If you’re going to write a language in metaphors why not just use emoji?

Not a lot of emojis in 2003-2005 to implement. But go ahead, sounds like fun.

Such as Emojicode? https://www.emojicode.org/

Though I think I prefer Emoticon: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Emoticon

I don’t even know what I’m looking at... I love it!

This actually makes Intercal look intelligible.

Not even once.

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