Aceto: A programming language based on a 2D Hilbert curve grid | Hacker News Reader

Aceto: A programming language based on a 2D Hilbert curve grid

github.com

60 pointslelf16 comments

> Without knowing the corresponding Hilbert curve, this can be hard to read.

I would say that without knowing the Hilbert curve, it's rather impossible to read; it becomes merely hard to read if we are following the correct path.

Yeah.. I was really hoping there was something to see here beyond a unique form of mandatory obfuscation.

For instance, Hilbert curves have some interesting properties like the very roughly linear distance along the curve to near neighbors. (Sorry looked for citations but nothing good and succinct popped up quickly.)

This was kind of the idea of it; that you are always close to your neighbors, and can therefore reduce the pain of jumping somewhere, using the directional/mirror commands `<>v^|_` etc.

Feels like the first thing I'd do when coding with this would be a hilbert curve <-> linear form converter script.

edit: ah, right there's some commands that can move in 2D and depend on the position in the hilbert curve, so that'd probably be harder than expected.

The fact that the Hilbert Curve denotes the default path means you could shape your program to pack jump targets very near to their sources, reducing the control flow these grid-based languages usually require.

Another 2d esoteric language that recently got my attention is Wumpus: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Wumpus

I wanted to hate this, because it seems like it's trying really hard to be nerd-hip. But dammit this is cool, and there is going to be some really cool executable ASCII art made with it.

I swear, though, if I see one single talk by someone wearing a logo-shirt and slacks at some street-level corporate HQ in SoMa posted on Youtube...

True, but Piet [1] already does that without Hilbertizing code. Also, humble flex for calling this 7 months ago [2]

[1] http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18496566

To be fair, Piet doesn't really do ascii art. But all you really need (hold my beer I'm gonna attempt a [2]) is a text representation.

File format: ascii, with lines of characters corresponding to lines of pixels. The longest line sets the image width, ragged lines should be padded according to implementation.

Special characters:

Line feed: ignored

Carriage return: end of line

Tab or space: #ffffff

#: #000000

All other printing characters (0x21, 0x22, [0x24-0x7f]): ordinal is taken mod 18 and converted to pixel values,

0 -> #c00000

1 -> #ff0000

2 -> #ffc0c0

3 -> #c0c000

...

17 -> #ffc0ff