56,000 lines of DOOM, in a language I made up

4 hours ago (betlang.dev)

24 comments

ghuntley

Reply
andai  3 hours ago

Excellent. At last, I can I confess a far worse crime.

Late 2020, pre-AI, which I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse...

  #include "uwu.h"
  #include <stdio.h>

  iwint main() stawt
      iwint owo is 5 yiff
      fuw (iwint uwu is 0 yiff uwu smol owo yiff uwu incwease) stawt
          owo is owo wif uwu yiff
          spweak nuwumber_fowmat, owo spwake yiff
      stawp
  stawp

--

  // uwu.h

  #define is =
  #define yiff ;
  #define stawt {
  #define stawp }
  #define fuw for
  #define iwint int
  #define wif +
  #define wiffout -
  #define smol <
  #define larg >
  #define incwease ++
  #define spweak printf(
  #define spwake );
  #define nuwumber_fowmat "%d\n"

Obviously this one also runs DOOM ;)

  • kmoser  43 minutes ago

    I did this in 1989, as if C had been written by the folks who brought you COBOL:

      #include <stdio.h>

  #define OpenBrace {
  #define CloseBrace }
  #define OpenBracket [
  #define CloseBracket ]
  #define OpenParenthesis (
  #define CloseParenthesis )
  #define NoReturnType void
  #define NoParameter NoReturnType
  #define MainFunction main
  #define Semicolon ;
  #define FunctionPrototype
  #define ActualFunction
  #define PointerTo(atype) atype*
  #define OutputToStdout(astring) printf(astring)
  #define IsEqualTo =

  FunctionPrototype NoReturnType
  MainFunction OpenParenthesis NoParameter CloseParenthesis Semicolon

  ActualFunction NoReturnType
  MainFunction OpenParenthesis NoParameter CloseParenthesis
  OpenBrace
    PointerTo(char) string IsEqualTo "Now is the time for all good men, etc.\n" Semicolon
    OutputToStdout(string) Semicolon
  CloseBrace

  • jraph  3 hours ago

    I did the same thing, shouting.h, defined the uppercase version of many types and keywords.

    Had a good uncontrolled laugh during a team presentation with a colleague. It was a bit disrespectful for the poor presenter who had nothing to do with this…

    Can't find shouting.h anymore unfortunately.

  • giancarlostoro  33 minutes ago

    Reminds me of my "BASIC" #define statements I made in college to make C look slightly more BASIC-like, I think everyone does this the moment they realize they can do this in C.

bentt  3 hours ago

This is a good example of where it’s important to be more up front about the role of AI in the making of a thing.

Making a language that compiles through LLVM is no small task and takes a lot of expertise. Most of the time people do it because they have a point of view and are highly technical.

Making a joke language via AI is an entirely different exercise. Not without value but not the same, especially when evaluating what it means about the author.

  • NuclearPM  2 hours ago

    I made a “fully” functioning programming language that is kind of like Rebol on luajit using Claude code - and I haven’t really done much serious programming since college 20 years ago. It’s fun though.

  • engineer_22  1 hour ago

    > This is a good example of where it’s important to be more up front about the role of AI in the making of a thing.

    Maybe, but we don’t always discuss our tool stack before showing our work because a lot of times it’s assumed or not interesting. AI is a tool, it’s a lever that you push on to multiply your effort. The product of your effort speaks for itself, as it always has.

ahmadyan  16 minutes ago

Nicely done Geoffrey, I think we are coming full circle, instead of porting projects to different languages (for whatever) like going from zig -> rust -> zig, now we can also add additional hops like zig -> rust -> curse -> ts -> ocaml -> english -> zig.

Thank you for keeping the token furnace burning!

Retr0id  3 hours ago

It's cool that AI lets you cheaply experiment with language design, but I wish people would stop using it for the writeups, too.

Buried near the end is a mention of per-frame arena allocation, which is an interesting idea for a game engine (although not a novel one).

jdw64  3 hours ago

I'm writing the C backend by hand and using AI for the rest, so how did this author manage to finish an entire language in just 34 hours? I've been steadily catching and fixing what the AI writes, so it's amazing to me that they ended up with a complete language. It makes me wonder if the way I'm building a compiler is just wrong.

  • swiftcoder  3 hours ago

    If you tell it to write a spec -> then write the tests -> then implement, the LLM should be able to pretty much one-shot a compiler frontend. LLMs really benefit from the kind of task that has a built-in validation loop.

    • jdw64  3 hours ago

      I'm working on something similar, but unlike the author, my progress has been pretty slow. It's tough. I do write about a fifth of the code myself, but I keep getting stuck on the rest.

vofx  3 hours ago

[flagged]

  • senbrow  2 hours ago

    I know you probably mean very well, but IMO it's really bizarre and patronizing to be offended on someone else's behalf, especially if the offended people in question are perfectly capable of expressing the sentiment themselves.

    If there's actual outrage from the group, it will surface from them without your involvement.

    If it offends YOU, just say so plainly.

    The hypothetically offended group doesn't need a random stranger to white knight for them in the comment section of a niche tech news website.

    • dmurvihill  1 hour ago

      Actually, the group in question have repeatedly and vocally asked others to speak up when they see nonsense like this.