*Note, I am writing this blog in haste because I have a lot of stuff to do I have school tomorrow so please excuse all run-on sentences. That was a joke, but seriously, I didn't have time to really proof this too well.
Well, I think most of the seven of you who remember last blog post recall that I was programming a game engine using the GNU library guile, which basically is a Scheme interpreter for C code. Well, unfortunately guile is not reentrant, meaning it can't handle multiple threads. What are threads? Threading is a concept in which allows multiple processes to be handled at the same time. This is critical for game engines, because a good game engine has to handle both user input and drawing stuff on the screen at the same time. This forced myself to write my own interpreted engine from scratch. I started yesterday, and finished today (aside from missing primitives the most important being "if"), and thought I'd show you guys the result. Note: PLEASE DEAR GOD DON'T MODEL YOUR LANGUAGE AFTER MINE. Not because of copyright or anything, but because you wont have good time trying to use it.
5
This is a number, return that number.
Simple enough, right? Well, it gets more complicated...
*1 4 5
This is a primitive followed by some numbers. This primitive, *1, adds the 2 numbers in front of it. To add multiple numbers, one must do something like:
*1 *1 5 5 5
This returns 15. Other useful primitives include *0: '=', *2: subtract, *3: multiply and *4: divide. One who has taken geometry at one point can compare primitives to postulates.
*0 @1 5
This assigns the '5' to the 1 place in the variable stack. Notice how I don't say the "first place" in the variable stack. That would be 0.
*1 @1 3
This is equal to eight.
[2 *1 6 7]
This defines the procedure '2'. Most of you will probably think: didn't he mean to write "functions"? No, there's a difference in my language. Functions take arguments, procedures do not. You can not pass arguments in my language. There's a reason for this, but it's more like an excuse.
$2
Calls the procedure 2 and returns 13.
*1 *3 $2 @1 5
Returns 70
Well, that's pretty much it. I just finished so I thought it would be cool to show you. I remember you all got a kick out of the (x86?) Assembly I showed you, so I thought I'd make the language as annoying as possible to express. Finally, the game engine will be called: The Berry Engine, named after my good friend TheRedPepperofDoom, who's birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday!
|
Impressive, young Skywalker.
>>>[1 $2]
>>>[2 $1]
>>>$1
Instead of looping forever, the program segfaults.
Did you see the presentation on Go circling the internet a few days ago? Seems like a neat little language. Might be fun to write an engine or an emu in it.
C is nice for when you need speed, but its unwieldy in some cases.
Had to look up what guile was; Any reason for going with a thing that crunches C into scheme?