This sounds to me like a form of literate programming, a style created by Donald Knuth. The only form I am aware of that achieved some popularity is Jupyter notebooks, but I don't know whether Jupyter lives up to Knuth's ideas.
> pull that together to generate a program in whatever programming language. In literate programming this would be called "tangling". Taking the document you wrote and extracting a code file (or many) in a particular language (or languages). The Emacs editor has this in org-mode with org-babel <https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/>. It supports putting multiple programming languages in the same document, and interacting between them. A block of Python code can take its input from a block of shell code. I am not sure if it is unique in supporting multiple languages compared to other literate programming tools. If you follow your idea further, perhaps this could be a source of inspiration. > It doesn't matter what the source language is. Pseudocode, models, etc. They are just other languages. So transpile from anything to some language However your idea is definitely unique, as literate programming is focused on prose and not models, as far as I am aware. Org Babel sort of has this as it has its own data structures. It can represent lists, tables, etc. and knows how to get them from and feed them to a variety of programming languages. Org Babel becomes a glue that holds many languages together, so that you can express each idea in the language best suited to it, and present your ideas in an order best suited to being understood by the reader. TiddlyWiki or a similar tool could take this further due to being a generic database. In TiddlyWiki I find myself wishing for Emacs, and in Emacs I find myself wishing for TiddlyWiki. And I struggle to find time for learning more about related areas like TiddlyWikiPharo <https://talk.tiddlywiki.org/t/tiddlywikipharo-and-critical-code-data-literacy-curriculum/2033> (and the tools it is built on like Pharo and Glamorous Toolkit <https://gtoolkit.com/>), Lisp Machines, the Acme text editor (Video: A Tour of the Acme Editor <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M&t=472s>), Plan9, Oberon. I hope you or others find some of these links and ideas interesting and inspiring. On Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 11:24:38 AM UTC-5 Charlie Veniot wrote: > Hey, I wasn't announcing a project to do that kind of thing. > > It is just a shiny object, yet another interesting thought grabbing at my > attention, and I was only hoping to find like-minded individuals who would > like to talk about it, maybe suggest some related resources/happenings etc. > > I've got way too many interesting things on the go to take on this kind of > TiddlyWIki project. > > On Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 12:14:16 PM UTC-4 [email protected] > wrote: > >> (Hmmm, I thought I responded to this. Disappeared in the ether, I guess!) >> >> Charlie Veniot wrote: >> > Scott Sauyet wrote: >> >> >> So while I wish you luck in this, I personally don't hold out much >> >> hope for such an endeavor. >> >> > That's the kind of wish that leaves a foul odeur de je-ne-sais-quoi in >> my >> > cornflakes. >> >> But I do mean it. I really wish you the best. I'll be on the sidelines >> cheering you along, celebrating your victories, mourning your failures. >> But >> I've been heart-broken enough in trying this that I will never hold out >> high >> hopes. >> >> > Whatever I did to you to deserve that stick in my "what if" wheels of >> fun >> > thinking, my apologies. >> >> I think you're likely to run into the same sort of insurmountable >> obstacles >> that I have. But if you're determined to stick to this course, all I can >> do is cross my fingers and hope you see something I never did. I don't >> expect it; but if you manage it, I will gladly eat (some vegetarian >> alternative to!) crow. >> >> I mostly answered because I did want you to know that there are others >> who've held similar hopes, even if mine have mostly faded. I never tried >> this with TiddlyWiki. I don't see that making a difference, but this tool >> continually surprises me. >> >> > If it is possible to transpile from one language to another >> successfully. >> > If it is possible to compile from one language to another successfully. >> > >> > It doesn't matter what the source language is. Pseudocode, models, >> etc. >> > They are just other languages. So transpile from anything to some >> language >> > ... why not? >> >> It is completely possible to store a model in TW that you could use to >> generate code in some small set of languagues. As you say, that is what >> compilers do, and basic compilers are relatively simple. (Optimizing >> compilers can get arbitrarily complex.) What I don't think is likely >> is being able to create a high-level model system that will let you >> quickly spin up new languages that will convert such models to source >> code for that language. >> >> Think of the differences between the models underlying COBOL and Prolog. >> A single model that spans both idea-spaces would already be tricky >> enough. Now add in Forth. Then Agda. I think very quickly you end up >> with a model that either has no cohesion or is so abstract that the code >> generators are impossible to get right. >> >> I understand that Turing completeness means that a very large class of >> languages -- probably all we care about -- can solve the same problems. >> But that does not mean that converting between them or from some high- >> level model is a tractable problem. >> >> If you do try to pursue this, I would make one suggestion: don't try >> to solve one language up front and move on to the next. Instead try >> at least three languages, ones with very different models. If you >> can do this for some very limited domains (say "Hello, World", >> factorial, and basic arithmetic), then I think you might be onto >> something useful. Then try expanding alternately in two directions: >> adding some new feature you want your model to support, and adding >> a new language, with a model as different from the existing ones >> as you can. (Saying you can generate Java and C# isn't saying much, >> but saying you can generate Java and Prolog is much more impressive.) >> >> Best of luck (and yes, I really mean that!) >> >> -- Scott >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/f1657cc2-9b39-42fe-bd28-59ea32fe6f73n%40googlegroups.com.
