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Genesis: an interpreted, Turing-complete Paleo-Hebrew programming language

github.com

157 points by u8 3 years ago · 71 comments (70 loaded)

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Eleison23 3 years ago

Oh, this is Heaven!

As I represent a unique intersection of Christian, linguist/philologist, and computer geek, this was clearly designed to appeal to my precise demographic.

Now, I don't program anymore, but according to the FAQ, that does not disqualify me from enjoying this project!

  • samatman 3 years ago

    Are you... Larry Wall?

    • adastra22 3 years ago

      There are dozens of us. Dozens!

      • jononomo 3 years ago

        Honestly, every third Christian I know is a linguist/computer geek.

        • adastra22 3 years ago

          I’m an atheist, lol, but I still geek out on biblical archeology and ancient languages.

        • teilo 3 years ago

          But how many can read Paleo-Hebrew?

          • Eleison23 3 years ago

            I believe the gauntlet has been thrown down here. The challenge is not merely to read it, but to write it fluently enough to develop nifty code. Just read the FAQ! And Paleo-Hebrew fluency may not be the foremost obstacle — the numbering system is arcane and downright hostile to Westerners!

    • yellowapple 3 years ago

      I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone turns this into a Perl dialect along the same lines as Lingua::Romana::Perligata.

tempodox 3 years ago

> the Bible explicitly forbids object worship

Strange, even sinful, to write this interpreter in Java then.

downvotetruth 3 years ago

Strange to take the effort regarding paleo-Hebrew, but not use it with Yahweh's (𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄) name in the title. Guess a Cohen will fork it.

  • schoen 3 years ago

    But you're not supposed to take the name of the Lord in main().

  • epilys 3 years ago

    You can't say the Tetragrammaton out loud though.

    Personally I find it hilarious that apparently in more than one case the common Hebrew spelling of YHWH, יהוה, was wrongly understood or just misspelled as πιπι (pee-pee) in Greek texts.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton

    • downvotetruth 3 years ago

      Then don't say it or substitute "my lord" when spoken. No prohibition against it writing it.

      • schoen 3 years ago

        In Orthodox Judaism there is also a rule against erasing or defacing names of God (instead, you're supposed to bury them in a cemetery).

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genizah

        That also then generates a reason to try to avoid writing these names unnecessarily, because using them unnecessarily increases the chance that someone will deface them, or creates extra material that has to be disposed of carefully.

      • epilys 3 years ago

        That's correct, but my comment was basically an indirect suggestion of using peepee as a syntax keyword or language name.

adastra22 3 years ago

I would have thought Forth would be a better fit for such a language.

  • zbird 3 years ago

    "Therefore the LORD God sent him Forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."

    • adastra22 3 years ago

      Need a language named “multiply” so we can quine Go, Forth, and Multiply.

sharikous 3 years ago

When you actually read the keywords things like "function" are taken from Modern Hebrew "funktzia" - so an ancient Hebrew wouldn't understand it

But I doubt you could even think about a programming language for ancient Hebrews

mushufasa 3 years ago

For those who are commenting about TempleOS... I think this project has too much self-awareness to cause a real schism

From FAQ: > Why not use Modern Hebrew?

> If you are able to program in this language, I have failed.

> Why are you running an interpreted language over an interpreted language?

> "Wherefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" 4

MycroftJones 3 years ago

Gematria number system is a comparatively modern invention. Researching the old weights, measures, and coins of Israel show good evidence that the Egyptian number system was used, which is a somewhat decimal numbering system. Would be very cool if this language used the ancient Egyptian number system instead of this new-fangled gematria stuff. Then the numbers would be visually very distinct as well.

themodelplumber 3 years ago

I would try it, but I'm afraid someone would point out that I'm mistakenly coding in Paleo-Klingon...

smoldesu 3 years ago

Looks really cool, but if God wrote all of us in Java then that explains a lot more than the bible does...

  • game-of-throws 3 years ago

    Yep, rewrite it in Rust please. I hate having to pause for garbage collection every night.

    • mirntyfirty 3 years ago

      That’s why there’s a sabbath

      • dotancohen 3 years ago

        For me the Sabbath is a recompile with bug fixes. When I'm GCing every night, at least someone can ring me in an emergency. The phone is off for Sabbath.

        And I'm not joking about the bugfixes. A day off of _everything_ is a great way to reflect on the past six days, and to learn from them. I'm certain that my ostensibly-six-day-week is more productive than my seven-day-week ever was.

    • adastra22 3 years ago

      The only reasonable substrate for this is Brainfuck.

  • schoen 3 years ago

    I imagine many people here know the song "The Eternal Flame".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OjTPj7K54

  • gabereiser 3 years ago

    I’d definitely be a NullPointerException. I don’t want a programming language that I can’t type in ascii. Sorry, god. Limited to 255.

  • pavo-etc 3 years ago

    I personally have a lot of boilerplate that seems redundant.

duckqlz 3 years ago

There are errors throughout the documentation.

E.g. 5782 = 𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤒𐤐״𐤁

when clearly it should be 𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤕𐤒𐤐״𐤁

singularity2001 3 years ago

That's the phoenician alphabet, paleo hebrew does not have a unicode block yet

hprotagonist 3 years ago

excuse me but have you considered the value of a really good nam-shub? the compilation step is a bit of a doozy, but the payoff is really something!

aasasd 3 years ago

> fixed-length array

Back to atheism for me.

avodonosov 3 years ago

Ok, waiting for cuneiform now

markus_zhang 3 years ago

What about HolyC? Actually How is HolyC in the eyes of language engineers?

teilo 3 years ago

Shouldn't this be named 𐤁𐤓𐤀𐤔𐤉𐤈 ?

  • latte 3 years ago

    You probably meant 𐤁𐤓𐤀𐤔𐤉𐤕.

    Side note: to a Jew, this obsession of Christians over Hebrew and Biblical things feels rather... creepy - although I can't quite rationalise it.

hajimuz 3 years ago

Jesus' programming language?

hprotagonist 3 years ago

I incanted: “ROS-AILE-KAPHILUTON-MIRAKOI-KALANIEMI-TSHANA-KAI-KAI-EPHSANDER-GALISDO-TAHUN…” and just as I finished, my timer reached zero and told me I was finished, for today, free until tomorrow morning crashed down on me and I started the same thing all over again.

“Meh,” I said. “Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh.”

markhenderson 3 years ago

Terry A. Davis vibes?

29athrowaway 3 years ago

God's language is HolyC.

You can embed a realistic elephant in HolyC.

You can also write chess software to play against god.

dqpb 3 years ago

> If you are able to program in this language, I have failed.

HeavenBanned 3 years ago

Where's TempleOS when you need him? looks up into the sky

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