F-Flat

F♭ (pronounced F-flat) is a toy language.

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Introduction

F♭ (pronounced eff-flat) is a toy language.

F♭ is a dynamically typed array-oriented concatenative language similar to Forth, Joy, Factor and others. F♭ is meant to be used interactively, for example in a CLI REPL, like R or the command shell, or in a stack based calculator. This constraint dictates many of the language features.

Get F♭

F♭ code can be found at https://github.com/Hypercubed/f-flat_node. Currently, it can be only be used by cloning the github repo.

git clone https://github.com/Hypercubed/f-flat_node.git
cd f-flat_node
npm install
npm start

Guiding principles

• interactive first
  • minimal hidden state
  • easy to type and read
  • reads left to right, top to bottom (like a book)
  • whitespace not significant syntax
  • interactive development.
• flat concatenative language
  • name code not values
  • multiple return values
  • concatenation is composition/pipeline style
  • no unnecessary parentheses.
• no surprises (Principle of “least astonishment”)
  • immutable data
  • decimal and complex numbers
  • both double and single quotes
  • no order of operations (RPN)
• Use common work-flow in Forth-like languages:
  • Write some code to perform a task
  • Identify some fragment that might be generally useful
  • Extract it and give it a name
  • Replace the relevant bits with the new word
  • [Refactor] when: Read-Eval-Print-λove:
    • complexity tickles your conscious limits
    • you’re able to elucidate a name for something
    • at the point when you feel that you need a comment
    • the moment you start repeating yourself
    • when you need to hide detail
    • when your command set (API) grows too large
    • Don’t factor idioms