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Show HN: A Basic-Like Programming Language That Runs in the Browser

easylang.online

11 pointschkas6 comments

That looks overall neat, though i'm not sure if i like the "." as a subroutine terminator - "end" would be better IMO. Also if this is meant to be used for teaching kids programming i'm not sure if the gambling bits in the Monte Carlo section would be appreciated by everyone :-P.

I really do like the trace mode though (but i'd make the variable display a bit more prominent, like on a grid or something and perhaps making the variables that are changed as red with a quick fadeout to black - pulse-like - to show what exactly was changed for that step).

Also, this is me, but i'd really prefer it if it was a small redistributable desktop application, QBasic-style :-P.

"end" also works as a subroutine terminator. The gambling simulations in the Monte Carlo section show that you always lose - and are IMO actually valuable for teenagers. Thanks for the suggestion for the trace mode - but it's not that easy to implement.

Yeah i also noticed this article[1] that goes into more detail (and found interesting that when the article said "Most of the time we lose." i could modify the code to run the entire example 100 times and count the number of times you'd win - that would be ~20% :-P).

Perhaps make the "Why It Is a Bad Idea to Go to the Casino" text at the top of the Monte Carlo methods a link to that article (with some font that stands out a bit - like bold or colored - since my eyes glanced over that part).

[1] https://easylang.online/apps/tutorial_mcarlo.html

> if it was a small redistributable desktop application

It is created as a PWA (Progressive Web App). So you can "install" the web app and run it offline.

This is very cool. I tried to make a similar thing but with JavaScript at yazz.com, but I like this a you used actual basic

Cool. Parsing Javascript with Javascript is much more complex than parsing my simple language in C (WASM).

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