I made a programming language with M&Ms
116 points by tosh | 2 days ago | 41 comments
bronlund - 2 days ago
It’s funny until one guy spills his bag of M&M’s and accidentally deletes the production database.
2 days ago [Collapse]
ramon156 - 2 days ago
Wanted to fix this bug but I ran out of green M&M's
Timwi - a day ago
Will read this later, but in the meantime, if you're into “physical programming”, check out efghij: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Efghij
amelius - 2 days ago
What color is your function?
2 days ago [Collapse]
spaqin - a day ago
That's one language that doesn't need an external IDE for syntax highlighting.
bigstrat2003 - 2 days ago
It's all fun and games until some fat bastard like me decides he wants a snack. Incidentally, which flavor? Asking for a friend.
swaraj - a day ago
This is what HN is all about
MASNeo - a day ago
Thank you.Awesome project!
Unfortunately I think you have given my kids one more hard to refuse reason to get more candy: I need more storage.
xnorswap - a day ago
I can't see it explained, why/where is 000000 defined as newline?
rhoopr - a day ago
Looking forward to the first LLM&M coding agent
filozopdasha - a day ago
it actually sounds like a fun idea, but i have one question. do you think a lightweight CNN trained on synthetic candy layouts would outperform the deterministic decoder for messy real world photos?
a day ago [Collapse]
mufeedvh - a day ago
Yes, for messy real-world photos a lightweight CNN would probably outperform the deterministic decoder, but I’d still use it in a hybrid pipeline with classic CV for blob detection and deterministic logic for reconstructing the actual program.
Surac - a day ago
oh man the program just melted in my mouth
tapeloop - a day ago
but can it run Doom?
owyn - 2 days ago
This is AI slop but mildly amusing. Brainfuck did it first.
2 days ago [Collapse]
ramon156 - 2 days ago
Which part made you conclude there's AI involved?
2 days ago [Collapse]
owyn - a day ago
the bold section headers and bullet points. but who cares. i don't.
a day ago [Collapse]
306bobby - a day ago
I literally write like the article on similar write ups, where do you think the AI's learned to write this way from.
I really don't get the AI vibes from the actual writing of it
a day ago [Collapse]
willwade - a day ago
It gave me strong vibes too. It’s the writing style. I’ve seen OpenAI write just like this. Doesn’t mean it’s bad. There’s a few other markers. Note “silly” in quotes and over use if that word. Once would be enough. But also this is very very typical. The bolting and short quite direct and a bit repetitive statements “it absolutely does not solve “dumped a bag of candy on a messy kitchen table and took a dramatic iPhone shot.”
Real example programs are where the joke becomes a language I didn’t want this to stop at “hello world with candy colors.”” The over use of quoting. The bold. It’s not like a human wouldn’t write this. But it’s unusual for a human to do this imho. All the same - it feels novel. And at the end of the day it’s a neat idea. It’s just we enter this new brave world where things written like this give you the ick. “Where do the ai learn this from?” Well I wouldn’t mind betting the author asked it to be written in a hn style post.
a day ago [Collapse]
Timwi - a day ago
Please re-read your comment and tell me you're not grasping at straws just to accuse someone of using AI to write.
sdwr - 20 hours ago
Yeah, the execution is stronger than the idea and design choices as well, which suggests heavy AI support
NetMageSCW - 21 hours ago
You have a problem. I would suggest thinking about it.
Timwi - a day ago
Are you serious? We can't make headers bold or use bullet points anymore without people like you instantly calling it AI slop?
nathaah3 - a day ago
this is so cool!
a day ago [Collapse]
mufeedvh - a day ago
thank you! :)
MostlyStable - a day ago
Not really the same, but made me think of this classic xkcd: https://xkcd.com/505/
avatardeejay - a day ago
Am I allowed to use the term psychopath in the most loving, even inspired, way?
a day ago [Collapse]
dang - a day ago
Psychopath implies lack of empathy so I don't think that's quite the word you want. You could maybe repurpose "psychotic" though!
a day ago [Collapse]
phyzix5761 - a day ago
Maybe lack of M&Mpathy?
47282847 - a day ago
“ As it turned out, there is nothing special about psychopaths when it comes to understanding or feeling empathy with others. ”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-at-any-a...
But maybe it is like so often more about the contradictory definitions of “empathy”, and capability vs. willingness.
a day ago [Collapse]
dang - a day ago
That's interesting! But confusing as well. The test they reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist) includes lack of empathy. Are they saying that this criterion could be dropped from the test with no effect on the classification?
efilife - a day ago
How I understand the article, is that they understand why others act in certain ways, they know the mechanism of empathy, but nothing here confirms that they are empathetic themselves. I think this article's conclusion is misleading.
a day ago [Collapse]
47282847 - 14 hours ago
There are many different definitions of what empathy means or how it “feels”. Do you (literally) feel the pain you’re inflicting on somebody else, do you know about it cognitively but not feel it, and how does any of it influence your actions.
Sharing a bit of backstory on why I decided to work on this; Firstly, “for fun” but primarily because I felt like I started losing the childlike wonder/whimsy I once had with programming.
So I started this new hobby where I ask myself “can I hack on this?” upon getting/seeing something.
For instance, I got this new Aula F75 keyboard (really good keyboard for the price btw, it sounds good too!) and it only has dedicated control software for Windows. So I downloaded the driver files, software executable, and manual sheet and reverse engineered the full protocol/packets and rebuilt it for my Mac. Then played snake with the backlights. Fun.
Anywho, happy to see my blog on the front page. Would love to hear if anyones going through something similar or working on silly little projects! :)
[1](https://github.com/berlinquin/UnoScript)
When I saw the title, I thought of Lambda Calculus[0] and SKI combinators[1]. Given that there are "only six useful colors", I wonder if M&Ms could be used to implement them.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus
Gist: https://gist.github.com/mufeedvh/db930a423fdce8c1d8e495c7a3f...
I suppose the only question remaining is if peanut M&Ms are higher-kinded when contrasted with the chocolate-only nullary type.
:-D
With: