Would recommend placing example language syntax above the fold. Was tough to have to scroll halfway down the entire site to see any syntax. Nobody cares about the EBNF syntax until they have a feel for the language.
Aren't LLMs supposed to write machine code directly, no more programming languages at all, any day now? Joking aside, programming languages are a good mental exercise. Forth was my first language after assembly. Didn't like the stack juggling and ended up using its macro assembler more and more, it became something else, conventions over code I suppose, like what to keep in registers. Forth (and Unix) got the composability requirement right, the testing of individual units.
I worked with Jason (creator of Om) at my last job. He's awesome!
A more explanatory article mentioned in the post: <a href="https://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenative-programming-matters.html" rel="nofollow">https://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-concatenati...</a>
I like how it unifies the operation stream with the stack (by pushing outputs back into the operation stream to process next).<p>An even simpler model than Forth, which evaluates an operation stream, with words that operate on a stack. And as noted, this makes recursion trivial.
What is the meaning and reason behind the choice of this specific name for the language?
> any UTF-8 text (without byte-order marker) defines a valid Om program.<p>What is the behavior of a program with unmatched braces? I am not sure a stray `}` would fit any of the defined syntax.<p><a href="https://www.om-language.com/index.html#language__syntax__" rel="nofollow">https://www.om-language.com/index.html#language__syntax__</a>
That would be parsed as a single operator and evaluated using the following rule:<p>> Evaluates to the operation defined for the operator in the environment. If none, evaluates to a constant function that pushes the operator, followed by all input terms, onto the output program.<p>I believe it would simply output itself.
Outstanding work
Another concatenative-ish one embedded in js .. just for fun - <a href="https://github.com/srikumarks/pjs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/srikumarks/pjs</a><p>You may find the "genailang" module fun to play with.
I confused this with <a href="https://github.com/omcljs/om" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/omcljs/om</a>
Missing a 'g'!<p>Omg would have a ring to it.
Let's have more programming language posts (even about "retro" ones like Icon, SNOBOL, Bliss, MUMPS, etc.), guys.<p>And less about AI topics.<p>Om.<p><a href="https://emojipedia.org/om" rel="nofollow">https://emojipedia.org/om</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om</a>
And therein lies the tragedy of folks exploiting well known culturally loaded symbols/concepts for attention/etc. on the Internet.<p>For example, I really don't know what to make of this; enthusiastic kid or attention-seeking influencer? - <a href="https://omlang.com/" rel="nofollow">https://omlang.com/</a>
if everyone on HN started downvoting all the AI posts (atleast the slop ones) it would cut down submissions by half
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Can you please not post shallow dismissals of other people's work? This is in the site guidelines: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>. They also ask you not to be snarky.<p>Nasty swipes like this routinely get upvoted, and then we end up with them at the top of a thread, choking out everything HN is supposed to be for. (I've downweighted it now.)
It's clearly a language designed for people <i>interested</i> in programming languages. Plenty of straightforward examples to show what makes this language interesting/different/worth your time.<p>But if you're incurious about things that aren't immediately practical (which has sadly been a growing number of HN community in more recent years), you will probably not be interested.<p>In an era when so much "practical" coding can be offloaded to an LLM, I'm particularly interested in seeing languages that are doing something different even if it makes them initially impractical.
I don't think the project wants any "takers" per se. The first sentence describes it as:<p>> a novel, maximally-simple concatenative, homoiconic programming and algorithm notation language<p>This is a toy language designed to showcase a novel programming paradigm.<p>Personally, I like tech demonstrations, so I scrolled down and found the examples section. That's all I was hoping to get out of this interaction.
I would at least update body tag to add basic css to make this more readable:<p><pre><code> <body style="width:80%;margin:auto;"></code></pre>
Seems totally appropriate to the project. It’s like going to a GitHub repo and scrolling to the Readme.
Life can be a dream if you don't treat everything as a pitch
Yeah show me the 5-line HTTP server
not that kind of language, it does not even come with integer types or "plus" operator by default.. they do give an example of<p><pre><code> define { minutes { dequote choose {minutes} {} = {:} <-[characters] } } { minutes {1:23} }
</code></pre>
which does Python's equivalent of<p><pre><code> "1:23".split(":", 1)[1]
</code></pre>
or for a more direct translation:<p><pre><code> def minutes(x):
return x[1:] if x[0] == ':' else minutes(x[1:])
minutes("1:23")</code></pre>
"The Om language is not:<p>complete. Although the intent is to develop it into a full-featured language, the software is currently at a very early "proof of concept" stage, requiring the addition of many operations (such as basic number and file operations) and optimizations before it can be considered useful for any real-world purpose. It has been made available in order to demonstrate the underlying concepts and welcome others to get involved in early development."
I am always kind of surprised when I go to a landing page for a language and there isn't any actual code. This is one of my biggest complaints about the rust language page, it feels crazy to me that there's <i>no code</i> and I think this is just a ridiculous choice (and I know this has been brought up before).<p>The old page had a built-in sandbox. Go used to have a more "Front and center" sandbox too but at least it's there if you scroll down <a href="https://go.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://go.dev/</a>
> I am always kind of surprised when I go to a landing page for a language and there isn't any actual code.<p>So, you're <i>not</i> surprised that this Om page has an extensive section called "Examples", right? <a href="https://www.om-language.com/#language__examples__" rel="nofollow">https://www.om-language.com/#language__examples__</a>
One time, this annoyed me so much that I made a website.<p><a href="https://anaminus.github.io/langding/" rel="nofollow">https://anaminus.github.io/langding/</a><p>om would fall under "Yes, must scroll".
There is code. Small examples start halfway down the page, and there's one 20-line example. Not much, but it's not accurate to say there's none.<p>It would be helpful to see any kind of motivation for the project though. Anything at all.
There is code, search for 'examples'.<p>It concludes by implementing a fold:<p><pre><code> define
{
[Fold]<- {
rearrange
{
rearrange
{
dequote
choose
quote Result
pair pair pair {[Fold]<-} Function Result Remainder
Remainder
}
{Result Remainder}
dequote Function Base <-[terms] Source
}
{Function Base Source}
}
}
{
[Fold]<- {[literal]<-} {} {1 2 3}
}</code></pre>
At least it has examples!
It perplexes me that someone would not have a few cookbook style examples above the fold on a website that describes a novel programming language.
Will never not complain about languages not giving code examples. It’s like writing a charting/UI/style library and showing no examples. Just what?
You overlooked the examples. They might not satisfy you, but there are examples.
To be fair, the examples are extremely easy to overlook. They are also, to put it delicately, not the most helpful.
Absolutely agree. But fairness precludes denying the existence of examples.<p>They are not prominent, but they are in a section with the heading 'Examples'.
apparently fold example is very helpful to some.
if it's something you do 100% of the time, is it <i>really</i> adding any information to the world?