Geekout!
A post about esoteric programming languages on MeFi reminded me of two things:
1. I once wrote an Unlambda interpreter in Python, whose chief virtue was that it was insanely slow. I think I have the source code around somewhere still. (I do.) I'm not sure if it was ever actually correct, though, because I think I tested it by running it on Unlambda quines and while it worked on some of them I think it didn't work on others? It had/has a pretty obtuse implementation strategy.
2. I also once wrote a Python module that allowed one to write code that looked like this. Some of that module cheats (for instance, strings like "os.remove" really ought to be something like (".", "os", "remove"), though I can't recall if that's precisely correct), but it does actually do what it was supposed to do. Writing this way allowed you to have real nested scopes at a time when Python didn't actually support them, but was in every other respect sort of difficult and not worth it.
Comments
on 2006-04-21 21:19:18.0, mrh commented:
I know I'm a programmer and all, but reading descriptions of languages like Unlambda make my head and tummy hurt. And they make me miss my undergraduate education.
and, further, on 2006-04-22 14:45:38.0, mrh commented:
Or, rather: