Insert <it’s not much but it’s honest work> meme. It only supports ints and bools, some logic and simple arithmetics and it compiles to Java but damn was it hard to get that far.

Can you guess what everything does?

  • bleistift2@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    It only supports ints and bools, some logic and simple arithmetics and it compiles to Java but damn was it hard to get that far.

    I have a bachelor’s in computer science and I don’t think I would be able to do that…

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        My college must have been full of sadists. They had undergrad compiler courses and required students to take them.

        • Adramis@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Same, it usually whacked about half the attempted majors into another major. In the first half of senior year. They kept wondering why their program wasn’t growing much even though similar colleges’ programs were growing like mold on a dorm shower curtain. I enjoyed the course and never used the primary skills taught in it again.

          • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            It really depends on what you do, but somehow, I actually did end up using some of the things those courses were teaching. It turns out the visitor pattern is extremely useful for writing JavaScript code transformers.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        9 months ago

        I had an entry-level compiler course during undergrad. We used JavaCC to generate a lexer and parser based on eBNF grammar.

        • WanakaTree@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          I definitely read this as you were a third year French major being forced to taking a compiler course for a moment and went wtf. Then my brain slapped itself and realized you mean you’re a student in France.

          • セリャスト@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 months ago

            Haha yeah I meant that I was studying computer science im France and not studying french. Here in France, bachelor are called licence and are only 3 years compared to 4 in north america afaik, but there are way fewer electives

          • bleistift2@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            Nah, I think they’ve won the French version of The Bachelor 2 years in a row and are about to win the third.

    • swordsmanluke@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Compilers are a specialized topic - and syntax design is fiddly - but it really is no harder than any other sort of program. A lot of the hard theoretical work was done back in the sixties and seventies. You don’t have to start from scratch. These days it’s “only” a matter of implementing the features you want and making sure your syntax doesn’t leave itself open to multiple interpretations. (just as arithmetic, e.g. ‘5 × 4 - 1’ requires some rules to make sure there’s only one correct interpretation, so do language syntaxes need to be unambiguous to parse. )

      Don’t get me wrong - writing a language is a lot of work and it’s super cool that OP has done this! I just want to stress that language development is 100% doable with an undergrad degree. If you understand recursion and how to parse a string you already have all the theory you need to get started.

      • profOP
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        9 months ago

        Valuable input! I actually am an undergrad student. There are a lot of frameworks out there that support writing languages, with MPS being one of them.

        If I’d start from scratch again and had a little more time, I’d frankly try writing an interpreter myself, instead of trying to conform to weird framework syntax, which I won’t be able to reuse in any other context.

        Saying syntax design is fiddly is an understatement. I focused very hard on getting an abstract syntax somehow finished before working on generation in my first iteration. Then I had so much technical debt, that I couldn’t get anything to work and had to rewrite a lot. So I scrapped it all and started again, starting with top level concepts including generation and only implementing some lower level ones, once everything around it worked properly.

    • catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      It’s likely transpiring and not compiling, so it’s a lot easier than it seems. Source: made a language that adds features to Python and transpiles to valid Python.

      • profOP
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        9 months ago

        It doesn’t compile or transpile in actuality. It generates Java based on an abstract syntax tree. The concrete syntax is not considered in Java generation by MPS.

  • bleistift2@feddit.de
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    class Scratch {
      // Start of file
    
      public static void main(args: string[]) {
        int number1 = 2;
        number 1 = 10;
        int number2 = 13;
        boolean fo_sure = true;
      
        if (fo_sure) {
          number1 = number1 + 5 - 10 * 2 / 3;
        }
      
        System.out.println(number1);
      
        boolean canYouSeeMee = false;
        System.out.println(canYouSeeMe);
        if (false) {
          canYouSeeMe = false;
        } else {
          canYouSeeMe = true;
        }
        System.out.println(canYouSeeMe);
      } 
    }
    

    What’d I win?

    I find it interesting and unnerving that I understood the code, but not the youthspeak.

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Well done, here’s your price: 🏅

      You may redeem it for a star on a GitHub repo of your choice.

      It all gets put into the main method though in this version 😄

  • neatchee@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Vibe check is your scope declaration (class?)

    num is obviously your int class

    fr? is your Boolean class

    if __ no cap is ’ if __ then’, if cap is ‘else’, sheesh ends the conditional

    flex __ on the haters is your echo/print

    frfr is your scope ending

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Correct!

      Vibe check is pretty much the scope. Classes aren’t a thing (yet).

    • AMDIsOurLord@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      We think alike friend

      Don’t lose your passion, doing things the shit old way can also make you a better programmer in the newer paradigms

      Although, I recommend you at least learn C++23

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    It’s so beautiful!

    Now I’m thinking about how to alias “flex X on the haters” into other development environments…

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Yes, it pretty much just wraps the expression in a “System.out.println(<expression>);”

  • Z4rK@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It’s really cool, but the example doesn’t produce any sensible output? If you have created something like this, why wouldn’t you have your demo output something sensible like Fibonacci or 1337 or whatever.

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Great idea if I have to extend it

      • neatchee@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I’m opening an issue on your ticket tracker to add filesystem i/o. Let the nightmare commence

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Very cool, I’d be interested in your publications once you’re done. I like metaprogramming, but once you realise you might have needed it, you’re already knee deep in fresh legacy code.

      • blotz@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You essential have a compiler written through metaprogramming. For your implementation, did you use a find and replace or did you define and parse a grammar like a true compiler.

        • profOP
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          MPS uses projectional editing. Which means for the user that everything you do is free from concrete syntax, and you basically edit a graphical representation of that abstract syntax tree directly, while it looks like you’re in a textual editor.

          So I define abstract nodes that may have certain relationships with each other and then give them a representation in the editor (which is what you see in the screenshot). These nodes may also have generators assigned to them, which use map/reduce operations to generate whatever source code I desire. It usually includes its own bit of code, and triggers code generation of its children as well.

          I hope that was somehow clear 😄

  • bleistift2@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    It only supports ints and bools, some logic and simple arithmetics

    That’s more than you need.

  • porgamrer@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    I swear, Zoomers are like the steve buscemi “fellow kids” meme, but somehow everyone in the scene is young

    Anyway, nice compiler. Might feel basic to you, but writing a back end for a low level IR format is not that much harder.

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Why aren’t the booleans like “facts” or “no cap” for true and cap for “false”?

    Also, you could have exceptions be called “Sus”

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      Because it was easier to use Java primitives than implement the constants myself.

  • SuperDuper@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Looks like you’ve got a bug in there.

    if false no cap
        canYouSeeMe = false
    if cap
        canYouSeeMe = true
    sheesh
    

    Won’t this always go into the else/cap condition since the if condition is checking to see that false == true?

    • profOP
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      You’re correct, but it doesn’t really matter for demo purposes. In an actual use case (whatever that would be for this language) you would of course want to use some kind of variable or expression there instead of a constant.

    • profOP
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      9 months ago

      It’s a tool for designing domain specific languages. Really interesting!

  • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Does it compile into JVM bytecode or Java source code?

    JVM bytecode is one of the most infuriating IRs I ever had the displeasure to work with, and if you managed to make a compiler for that, I applaud you.

    • profOP
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      Fortunately I generate Java source code from it. However MPS generates both source and byte code when you build the solution. For some reason I can’t get the byte code to run though, but the source code does, so I don’t care too much.