New 'Asciidots' Programming Language Uses Ascii Art (And Python)

An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: If the esoteric programming language Asciidots looks like a mess, it is at least a very different-looking and even aesthetically pleasing mess. Simply, its mechanics and syntax are based on Ascii art... Asciidots is a unique sort of programming language known as a dataflow language. In this sort of language, we can imagine units of data (like our variable x) following a data go-kart track that's interrupted in different places with pit stops that change the value of the data go-kart that's following the track around. One pit stop might add 1 to the variable, while another might chop it in half. At some points, the track might even split, with the data go-kart picking one fork depending on its current value. If, say, it's greater than 2 it might go left; otherwise, it goes right...

In Asciidots, the aforementioned go-kart track is represented by lines (|,-,/,\)... Most of the other non-line symbols are mathematical operators, but there are also symbols that direct the program to request input from the user, set values, print values, and change the direction of the unit of data... Under the hood, Asciidots is a Python program. An Asciidots program is just fed into that underlying program and digested into normal Python code, which is then executed.
The article includes some examples, and argues that esoteric esolangs like Asciidots force programmers to consider fresh perspectives. And in addition, "it looks really cool."

It's been done

[Smidge204]

RUBE is 20 years old...

https://github.com/catseye/RUB... [github.com]

Though if you want something that looks like art, there's also Piet:

http://www.dangermouse.net/eso... [dangermouse.net]

=Smidge=

Re:It's been done

[phantomfive]

Yeah, I thought it would be lame, but seeing how the code flows and watching it execute is kind of cool, actually. The ascii art turns into a kind of flow chart. It's like a map of the execution of the code, and you can watch the program counter travel through, like a car in a small city. It's just a toy but it gives me ideas for visualization that might work in larger, more realistic, projects.

Re:

[MangoCats]

Watching an animated 6502 emulator run a program is cool and entertaining too...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You ain't lived until you've watched your deck of punched cards get sucked through the card reader. Godspeed little cards! And pray that none of them jams.

Re:

[phantomfive]

And wished you had earplugs to deal with the drum memory......

Re:

[sensei moreh]

You ain't lived until you've watched your deck of punched cards get totally randomized because you dropped them on the floor. I know. I've lived.

Re:

[sysrammer]

You ain't lived until you've watched your deck of punched cards get sucked through the card reader. Godspeed little cards! And pray that none of them jams.

Sorry. You put the JOB card in the wrong order. Try again later.

Javascript as art

[globaljustin]

Good info.

To me Javascript has always looked like an abstract impressionist version of M C Eischer's work.

Re:

[Heath Raftery]

Heh. It's nothing like either of those. Really worth checking out for its unique properties.

Slashdot Lives!

[__aaclcg7560]

Bow down to your ASCII Goatse Overlords!

This is what happens..

[sheramil]

.. when people learn how to code by playing Minecraft.

... we can imagine units of data (like our variable x) following a data go-kart track that's interrupted in different places with pit stops that change the value of the data go-kart that's following the track around.

I don't have a problem with that. I just wish we had a kind of hopper that fed upwards as easily as it feeds down.

Befunge

[pushing-robot]

Is this really so different from Befunge? [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[spaceyhackerlady]

Or, for that matter, Brainfuck [wikipedia.org]?

...laura

Re:Befunge

[Tablizer]

"Pyfuck". Reminds me of a joke:

A little girl goes to a pet shop and asks, "Excuthe me do you have any widdle wabbits?" The shop keeper's heart melts.

He gets down on his knees so that he is on her level and says, "Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft, fwuffy, bwack wabbit, or one like that widdle bwown one over there...?"

The little girl blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and whispers . . . "I dont weally fink my pyfon gives a fwuck."

Re:

[tietokone-olmi]

Or SNUSP, the other path-routing esolang?

I imagine you'd write better code with Inform7

[Presence Eternal]

A variable is here. It is a number. "A positive integer between two and four." It is very dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

.. sadly....

[lkcl]

... the beauty of ASCII art is completely lost on the windows and macosx n00bs of yestercentury, what with all these GUI-based apps all using FUCKING VARIABLE WIDTH FONTS. *sigh*...

Re:

[phantomfive]

Look at gitlab, they have ascii art all over the place in their developer tools (open source).

Blank web page?

[antdude]

https://motherboard.vice.com/e... [vice.com] show up blank in my SeaMonkey v2.48 web browser. I had to turn off my uBlock Origin to view it. :(

Seems very similar in concept to Rail

[KeithIrwin]

It's more compact, but the control flow seems very much like Rail [esolangs.org].

Anyone remember Prograph?

[danberlyoung]

It was a dataflow language back in the early 90's. I think I still have the floppies and manuals for it somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]