

Ask HN: What programming languages aren't plain-text-based? - jawns

I'm looking for examples of programming languages, particularly for web stuff, that are not fundamentally plain-text-based -- i.e., the source code cannot be expressed as plain text.<p>I'm thinking about languages that use things like background colors or graphical elements to actually signify instructions (rather than just pretty things up).
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shii
Check out LoseThos[1] which has images and things as part of the source code,
a variant of the C spec which powers the whole OS to run JIT code. 64 bit
interesting operating system, all by one guy[2] over several years. LoseThos
himself was hellbanned by pg awhile ago and comments a lot still, but you only
see his comments if you put showdead to on. He posts lots of strange comments
about God's words to him and sometimes relevant comments.

[1] <http://www.losethos.com/>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos>

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dmlorenzetti
A controls engineer I know designs systems using ladder logic diagrams, which
represent the control logic graphically, largely by drawing the relays and
other devices that an earlier generation of engineers would have wired up
physically. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic>

In the systems dynamics world, programs like Simulink, ModelicaML, and Stella
allow users to graphically assemble the systems they want to simulate, by
linking icons (e.g., "accumulators" and "flows").
<http://www.mathworks.com/products/simulink/>
[http://www.iseesystems.com/softwares/Education/StellaSoftwar...](http://www.iseesystems.com/softwares/Education/StellaSoftware.aspx)
<http://www.openmodelica.org/index.php/developer/tools/134>

None of these cases really meets your criteria that the source code _cannot_
be expressed as text. Rather, they all use graphics to enable non-traditional
programmers (e.g., controls engineers with legacy skills) to interact with a
modular programming system.

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zck
Colorforth is a Forth written by Chuck Moore, the guy who created Forth in the
70s. In this quote from Colorforth site (<http://colorforth.com/cf.htm>) ,
read _word_ as _function_.

>In Forth, a new word is defined by a preceeding colon, words inside a
definition are compiled, outside are executed. In colorForth a new word is
red, green words are compiled, yellow executed. This use of color further
reduces the syntax, or punctuation, needed. It also makes explicit how the
computer will interpret each word.

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fpmp
There's Fortress.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_%28programming_languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_%28programming_language%29))

Not exactly what you were looking for, but its 'source code can be rendered as
ASCII text, in Unicode, or as a prettied image.'

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spatten
I think Thyrd (<http://thyrd.org/>) fits the bill. You might want to look at
the screencast for a good intro: <http://thyrd.org/thyrd/screencast.php?v=01>.

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ig1
All source code can be express in plain text, so I guess what you're actually
asking is what languages are significantly easier to understand with graphic
representation as opposed to textual.

Circuit boards are a good example of this.

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zephyrfalcon
Look for some of them here: <http://strlen.com/programming-languages>
(although they're not directly web-related)

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FaceKicker
LabVIEW comes to mind. Not really for web stuff though...

