The Imperium programming language - IPL

[Sherlock Holmes]

Here's a richer example showing how keywords may contain multiple terms, space separated terms, each of these when parsed generates an identical logical parse tree:

Code: [Select]

procedure English (X)

declare counter binary(15);

if counter > 0 then
   call retour;
else
   return;
end;

loop while (a > b)
   go to place;
end;

end;


Code: [Select]

procédé French (X)

déclarer counter binaire(15);

si counter > 0 ensuite
   appeler retour;
autre
   retour;
fin;

boucle tandis que (a > b)
   aller à place;
fin;

fin;

The grammar supports alternate keyword forms too, so in the English code we can write "go to" or "goto", so that flexibility is available if desired for some languages.

[Sherlock Holmes]

German:

Code: [Select]

routine German (X)

deklarieren counter binär(15);

wenn counter > 0 dann
   aufrufen retour;
anders
   rückkehr;
ende;

wiederholen solang (a > b)
   gehen place;
ende;

ende;


[Sherlock Holmes]

Russian:

Code: [Select]


процедура Russian (X)

   объявлять counter бинарный(15);

   counter = FACE B034 D85F BAD7:H;

   если counter > 0 затем
      вызов retour;
   еще
      возвращаться;
   конец;

   повторять в то время как (a > b)
ходят в place;
   конец;

конец;



[ataradov]

Russian one reads very poorly. My head would hurt if I had to read that all day long. Russian is very bad for programming languages, since words change a lot with gender, tense, plurality.

Also, "вызов" is a noun, to be consistent it should be "вызвать" (verb). Or "возвращаться" should be "возврат". But not both at the same time. And for a proper sentence structure "затем" should be "то".

And the whole idea of programming languages with different "reserved" words is pretty bad. It completely shuts down international teamwork. People don't do this not because it is impossible, but because it is impractical and nobody wants it.

There is a huge Russian accounting system from a company called 1C. They used Russian language in their scripting system. There was so much demand that they added English support. And the software is very specific for Russian market and tax laws, so there are no users outside of Russia and may be former Soviet republics.

Also, you would have to constantly switch the layout to type it, since parts of it (like constants) are still English only. This is more keystrokes, just to get a less readable result.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Russian one reads very poorly. My head would hurt if I had to read that all day long. Russian is very bad for programming languages, since words change a lot with gender, tense, plurality.

Also, "вызов" is a noun, to be consistent it should be "вызвать" (verb). Or "возвращаться" should be "возврат". But not both at the same time. And for a proper sentence structure "затем" should be "то".

Thank you, I'll factor your guidance into the dictionary, much appreciated.

And the whole idea of programming languages with different "reserved" words is pretty bad. It completely shuts down international teamwork. People don't do this not because it is impossible, but because it is impractical and nobody wants it.

Well I'm sure we could argue some of the claims all day, there are numerous languages that cater for non-English speakers take Citrine for example as one of the more prevalent, also Algol-68 supported Russian. I don't see how any of these claims about teamwork and being impractical can be justified, the grammar doesn't care at all about the keyword vocabulary, it is unaware, completely unaware. The design is sound, one can take source code written with any vocabulary and instantly convert it to any other 100% automatically, I can envisage an IDE having a dropdown to select rendered language and a "Save As" to save code in any desired supported language, no problem whatsoever.

Being able to take some complex logic written in English and automatically, instantly render it in Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, Serbian or whatever language one wants, can't honestly be described "bad" or "impractical".

If a team wanted to work in English then they'd just establish that as a team standard, changing the keyword vocabulary is no different to changing the IDE's font or colors, its an irrelevant detail.

There is a huge Russian accounting system from a company called 1C. They used Russian language in their scripting system. There was so much demand that they added English support. And the software is very specific for Russian market and tax laws, so there are no users outside of Russia and may be former Soviet republics.

Also, you would have to constantly switch the layout to type it, since parts of it (like constants) are still English only. This is more keystrokes, just to get a less readable result.

Picking a bad example of multi-language support does not prove the general argument you're trying to make.

In English, Algol68's case statement reads case ~ in ~ out ~ esac. In Russian, this reads выб ~ в ~ либо ~ быв.

See.

An English-only speaker and a Rusian-only speaker could work on the same code base and only ever see the code in their native language, I'd see only English keywords yet the Russian speaker would only see Russian, we'd never even care or know what language a co-worker preferred or used!

[Sherlock Holmes]

There, I made your changes, it took me two minutes Alex (updated the dictionary JSON, regen the grammar keyword definitions, change the source code to match - do a test parse).

Code: [Select]

процедура Russian (X)

   объявлять counter бинарный(15);

   counter = FACE B034 D85F BAD7:H;

   если counter > 0 то
      вызвать retour;
   еще
      возврат;
   конец;

   повторять в то время как (a > b)
ходят в place;
   конец;

конец;


Parses fine, all good.

[ataradov]

Also, "вызов" is a noun, to be consistent it should be "вызвать" (verb). Or "возвращаться" should be "возврат". But not both at the same time.

You just flipped them. Now the first one is a verb and the second one is a noun.

Also, I just realized what "ходят в" is supposed to be goto.  It is far better to use "перейти к" or "переход к". "перейти" is a verb, "переход" is a noun. So, again, use whichever ones you want to use in other places.

[tggzzz]

And the whole idea of programming languages with different "reserved" words is pretty bad. It completely shuts down international teamwork. People don't do this not because it is impossible, but because it is impractical and nobody wants it.

I tend to agree.

How many languages are there? How many won't be supported?

In many of my jobs it has been normal to have several different nationalities in the team.
If multiple languages are allowed, will if( aRectangle.সূচনাকরুন() ) {...} be allowed? If not, why not?

Which language would be stored in the source code control system?
How would "diffs" be done?
Who will write the tool that allows reconciles code in Basque, Finnish, Malayalam, Arabic, Hebrew?
While we don't have any boustrophedonic languages any more, will the top-to-bottom languages be excluded?
And, of course there is the issue of pair programming? Which language wins out there?

How will IDEs cope when parsing code so they can provide ctrl-space style autocompletion?
Can a programmer add a method in Chinese to a class in Spanish with a superclass in Welsh?

Yup it is a whole can of worms. Makes APL's somewhat arbitrary symbols look like a sensible option.

Maybe there's a reason  the Algol experience hasn't been repeated!

[DC1MC]

So this wonder of modern programming language will it have a translator (for example if a German team will pick up after a Russian team) to switch back and forth of the human languages ? Or if one has to do a small change will have to do it in Russian or Chinese.

I have to say that, initially, I didn't have great expectations, many attempt were made and abandoned, but now I'm amazed, I am so amazed about this collection of useless, anti-pattern and destructive features that I hope this will become an actual language, to be used as an "a la carte" example of instant firing/ failing exam reason. I'm really baffled, is this some subtle trolling attempt or someone actually wants to create such a thing and considers it an improvement, I'm at a loss of words, ALL, but ABSOLUTE ALL features that could make a programing language unusable, impossible to lint, difficult to learn and use because of "flexible" keywords, abnormal syntax that doesn't follow any existing conventions, except for failing attempts decades ago, what else should it have to make it even more cumbersome and loathsome to use, mind boggles  ?
 
And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers, good Lord, mon Dieu, boje moi, милостивый бог !!!

At this time I can only assume is a trolling attempt, magisterially executed, chapeau bas !!!

Cheers and (sincerely) good luck,
DC1MC

[tggzzz]

I'm really baffled, is this some subtle trolling attempt or someone actually wants to create such a thing

General principle: never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. Or incompetence. Or ego.

But there's no harm in idle speculation, particularly if contrary views are listened to  and understood rather than being dismir.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Also, "вызов" is a noun, to be consistent it should be "вызвать" (verb). Or "возвращаться" should be "возврат". But not both at the same time.

You just flipped them. Now the first one is a verb and the second one is a noun.

Also, I just realized what "ходят в" is supposed to be goto.  It is far better to use "перейти к" or "переход к". "перейти" is a verb, "переход" is a noun. So, again, use whichever ones you want to use in other places.

Very helpful, all tweaked!

Thank you Alex.

[DiTBho]

Pure garbage!

[DiTBho]

Computer science is a branch of mathematics, so it's as idiotic as thinking about translating mathematical symbols into *something*.

[Sherlock Holmes]

So this wonder of modern programming language will it have a translator (for example if a German team will pick up after a Russian team) to switch back and forth of the human languages ? Or if one has to do a small change will have to do it in Russian or Chinese.

The answers to these questions are rather clear if you take the time to read some of what I wrote.

I have to say that, initially, I didn't have great expectations, many attempt were made and abandoned, but now I'm amazed, I am so amazed about this collection of useless, anti-pattern and destructive features that I hope this will become an actual language, to be used as an "a la carte" example of instant firing/ failing exam reason.

You're too kind.

I'm really baffled, is this some subtle trolling attempt or someone actually wants to create such a thing and considers it an improvement, I'm at a loss of words...

If only that were true.

ALL, but ABSOLUTE ALL features that could make a programing language unusable, impossible to lint, difficult to learn and use because of "flexible" keywords, abnormal syntax that doesn't follow any existing conventions, except for failing attempts decades ago, what else should it have to make it even more cumbersome and loathsome to use, mind boggles  ?
 
And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers, good Lord, mon Dieu, boje moi, милостивый бог !!!

At this time I can only assume is a trolling attempt, magisterially executed, chapeau bas !!!

Cheers and (sincerely) good luck,
DC1MC

What a surprisingly nice, if insincere ending to an otherwise excellent example of bitterness, bigotry and diatribe.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Computer science is a branch of mathematics, so it's as idiotic as thinking about translating mathematical symbols into *something*.

No it isn't and nor is it a science.

[Sherlock Holmes]

So this wonder of modern programming language will it have a translator (for example if a German team will pick up after a Russian team) to switch back and forth of the human languages ? Or if one has to do a small change will have to do it in Russian or Chinese.

You'll need to explain why an ability to optionally render source code into one of a variety of cultures, is such a frightening prospect to you.

This is a detail, in the case of Imperium it was low hanging fruit due to the absence of reserved words, it was deemed potentially valuable and cost almost nothing, any grammar that lacks reserved words has this capability for free so I decided to develop it and I'm pleased with the results.

It's a detail though, just as the fact that a compiler can typically target a variety of CPUs, is a detail, abstracted away.

The vocabulary rendered on screen is as immaterial as the colors or fonts one uses in their IDE, I don't care if you use bold purple for C keywords or italic blue, why would I care that you have that freedom? if you find one makes your more productive, improves your concentration then use it!

Likewise why would you care if some individual with little familiarity with English (not that "goto" and "declare" and "static" even have the same semantics found in an English dictionary for these words!) be able to see source code using terms and words that are innately meaningful and pronounceable in their native language?

If a Bulgarian speaker, new to computer programming can learn more quickly, develop better understanding, can experiment more meaningfully using Bulgarian keywords, why is that a bad thing to you?

Consider the word "declare" here's what an English dictionary says:

"to announce something clearly, firmly, publicly, or officially"

or "static"

"showing little change"

Yet in code it means "tell the compiler we want to create a variable and name it <whatever>" or "this variable is not situated in stack memory", this and many many other examples confront the non-English user. Not only must they "learn" English words, those English words aren't even used as they are used in day to day English! The above calls out "publicly" too !

Consider:

declare counter binary static private;

See? the English dictionary definition of "declare" calls out "public" yet they're expected to use the word "declare" for something "private" - how is that not confusing? or why label a variable as "static" when that means "not to change" ? Then consider we might have fifty, sixty or more terms, keywords, attributes, options and directives and so on - and you have the audacity to insist that situation is good for everyone? not exclusionary? everybody should work in English?

If you truly want to talk about programming languages then all these issues are part of the subject, so get used to it.

[MIS42N]

Programming languages are called languages because they are. They are related to, but not one to one mapped to any human language. So translating the word 'declare' into a different human language is meaningless unless the users of that human language have an equivalent computer language where there is a one to one correspondence to the word 'declare'. Using the English dictionary definition of a word used in a programming language does not make sense. It is unfortunate that many words used in programming languages do have English meaning somewhat equivalent to their use in programming. Perhaps we'd be better divorcing the two, maybe the word 'gift' could be used instead of 'static'.

But maybe the flexibility proposed is useful. Each user could select a preprocessor that works two ways - converts source code to tokens, and tokens to source code. The source code is ephemeral, only exists on the user's screen. The transportable entity is the token code with one or more translation tables. A user can elect to use an existing translation table or add one.

Much of programming consists of operators and operands. In good programming the operands are given meaningful names in the language of the creator. It would be useful to translate the operands between users who have different human languages. I have encountered programs written by Germans where the intent is obscure until the operands are decoded. It would be convenient if I wished to work on the program to use the English equivalent of the operands but able to return the program to the creator with his own operands. Adding an English translation table to the original tokenised program would allow that.

Just a thought.

[Sherlock Holmes]

And the whole idea of programming languages with different "reserved" words is pretty bad. It completely shuts down international teamwork. People don't do this not because it is impossible, but because it is impractical and nobody wants it.

I tend to agree.

How many languages are there? How many won't be supported?

In many of my jobs it has been normal to have several different nationalities in the team.
If multiple languages are allowed, will if( aRectangle.সূচনাকরুন() ) {...} be allowed? If not, why not?

Which language would be stored in the source code control system?
How would "diffs" be done?
Who will write the tool that allows reconciles code in Basque, Finnish, Malayalam, Arabic, Hebrew?
While we don't have any boustrophedonic languages any more, will the top-to-bottom languages be excluded?
And, of course there is the issue of pair programming? Which language wins out there?

How will IDEs cope when parsing code so they can provide ctrl-space style autocompletion?
Can a programmer add a method in Chinese to a class in Spanish with a superclass in Welsh?

Yup it is a whole can of worms. Makes APL's somewhat arbitrary symbols look like a sensible option.

Maybe there's a reason  the Algol experience hasn't been repeated!

APL's symbols weren't arbitrary read Iverson's Turing Award lecture, hopefully you'll learn something about this subject. Your confused questions make it clear you understand little about this subject.

Everything I've said about this feature is OPTIONAL just like any number of coding standards or conventions. There is no computational reason for language keywords to be restricted to English, the abstract concepts are not English, or Japanese or Hebrew, they are universal  concepts just like mathematical ideas, or APL ideas.

You can use Google translate right now to translate Russian or Norwegian articles into English, is that a bad thing? does that cause nothing but problems and confusion? do people try to mix multiple languages within the same article? think about what I'm saying to you.

Being able to translate source code from English to Spanish to Dutch to Russian with absolutely no impact on the code's meaning or runtime behavior is actually a hugely powerful capability, one you clearly cannot perceive or grasp, it goes right over your head.

[tggzzz]

The vocabulary rendered on screen is as immaterial as the colors or fonts one uses in their IDE, I don't care if you use bold purple for C keywords or italic blue, why would I care that you have that freedom? if you find one makes your more productive, improves your concentration then use it!

Yes indeed.  So why are you concentrating your attention on something that is "immaterial"?

If you truly want to talk about programming languages then all these issues are part of the subject, so get used to it.

Programming languages are more about semantics and behaviour than they are about syntax. If you don't believe that, then consider the many very different things that "f.g(h)" can cause to happen in different languages.

So why are you concentrating your attention on syntax?

[tggzzz]

And the whole idea of programming languages with different "reserved" words is pretty bad. It completely shuts down international teamwork. People don't do this not because it is impossible, but because it is impractical and nobody wants it.

I tend to agree.

How many languages are there? How many won't be supported?

In many of my jobs it has been normal to have several different nationalities in the team.
If multiple languages are allowed, will if( aRectangle.সূচনাকরুন() ) {...} be allowed? If not, why not?

Which language would be stored in the source code control system?
How would "diffs" be done?
Who will write the tool that allows reconciles code in Basque, Finnish, Malayalam, Arabic, Hebrew?
While we don't have any boustrophedonic languages any more, will the top-to-bottom languages be excluded?
And, of course there is the issue of pair programming? Which language wins out there?

How will IDEs cope when parsing code so they can provide ctrl-space style autocompletion?
Can a programmer add a method in Chinese to a class in Spanish with a superclass in Welsh?

Yup it is a whole can of worms. Makes APL's somewhat arbitrary symbols look like a sensible option.

Maybe there's a reason  the Algol experience hasn't been repeated!

APL's symbols weren't arbitrary read Iverson's Turing Award lecture, hopefully you'll learn something about this subject. Your confused questions make it clear you understand little about this subject.

Hence my use of the word "somewhat".

Nonetheless, to an extent all words in all languages are arbitrary. There is no reason why one specific group of animals should be called "cat" and another "dog" - and in many languages they aren't!

Everything I've said about this feature is OPTIONAL just like any number of coding standards or conventions. There is no computational reason for language keywords to be restricted to English, the abstract concepts are not English, or Japanese or Hebrew, they are universal  concepts just like mathematical ideas, or APL ideas.

Oh! You actually realise the points I made! From your arguments I didn't guess that.

Optionality is a problem. With C++ (and to a lesser extent with C) there are so many ways of doing the same thing, which leads to the requirement that one of many subsets of the language is chosen in each  project/company.

Unjustified complexity is a problem. Even the C++ committee designing the language didn't understand the consequences of the language features' interaction; in one case they had to have their noses rubbed in it!

You can use Google translate right now to translate Russian or Norwegian articles into English, is that a bad thing? does that cause nothing but problems and confusion? do people try to mix multiple languages within the same article? think about what I'm saying to you.

Being able to translate source code from English to Spanish to Dutch to Russian with absolutely no impact on the code's meaning or runtime behavior is actually a hugely powerful capability, one you clearly cannot perceive or grasp, it goes right over your head.

Next you'll be suggesting that ChatGPT produces output where it is guaranteed that the details are reliable.

[Siwastaja]

And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers

Don't forget, it was supposed to be specifically tailored for those professionals in the industry who write cycle-accurate code for PIC microcontrollers all day long!

The hilarity of this "Sherlock Holmes" character has totally surpassed anything I expected, although the signs were clear from the start. Excellent thread to follow! 

[DiTBho]

And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers

Don't forget, it was supposed to be specifically tailored for those professionals in the industry who write cycle-accurate code for PIC microcontrollers all day long!

The hilarity of this "Sherlock Holmes" character has totally surpassed anything I expected, although the signs were clear from the start. Excellent thread to follow! 

Indeed 

[tggzzz]

And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers

Don't forget, it was supposed to be specifically tailored for those professionals in the industry who write cycle-accurate code for PIC microcontrollers all day long!

Well, threads do drift and their titles do change

The hilarity of this "Sherlock Holmes" character has totally surpassed anything I expected, although the signs were clear from the start. Excellent thread to follow! 

It is quite fun, isn't it

Here's another of his fun threads: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/true-analog-scopes/msg4579102/#msg4579102

[MIS42N]

And this is supposed to be used for microcontrollers

Don't forget, it was supposed to be specifically tailored for those professionals in the industry who write cycle-accurate code for PIC microcontrollers all day long!

That's me. The language is called assembler. Well, maybe not me as I don't consider myself a professional. But I do write cycle-accurate code (get the PIC to accurately detect a pulse arrival to the nearest 25ns while handling 9600 baud input in a soft UART and dealing with a 40kHz timer interrupt and a bit of I/O on the real UART on an 8-bit PIC without dropping the ball, we can do that).

[DiTBho]

One famous book is Papadimitriou's Computational Complexity; a book that shows that theoretical computer science is practically a branch of mathematics, mostly concerned with studies of algorithms, so it also shows that even when people say "computer science" and they usually include many things which would not be considered mathematics, for instance computer architecture, specific programming languages, etc, well, certain aspects of both "sets" are shared { logic, proofs, ...}

So computer science is practically a branch of mathematics