This is such a cool game concept! I would also argue that Lua is in a lot of ways a very suitable choice for this interaction, especially considering its flexibility in how and when modules get loaded and reloaded at runtime.
Also, being a constantly delighted user of the LÖVE framework, I was especially happy to see it being used here as well :)
(Original author here.) Thanks! While the player’s computer is initially configured by writing Lua code, there is also a lisp->lua compiler in the game (https://github.com/meric/l2l) that you will eventually need to learn how to use, and I plan on integrating at least 2 other different languages beyond that; right now I’m thinking of Forth and possibly Lily.
I chose Forth because it’s easy to implement in Lua itself, which will make interfacing between the two languages a lot easier. But I also want to include a language with a decent static type system (one with type inference and no nulls).
In this case implementing my own is out of the question, so I need to find one that (like Lua) is designed for embedding inside another language. Most of the time with static languages it is not that difficult to embed a program you’ve written in another language, but embedding the whole compiler is incredibly complicated. Lily is the only static language I can find designed for embedding the whole thing, and while I disagree with some of its design decisions (like only implementing type inference for locals and one-use lambdas), it’s a much better fit than anything else I could find.
There is actually a project called Spacemacs (http://spacemacs.org - a combination of vim and Emacs. I quite like it, personally), which is what I thought this was going to be about, upon seeing the title. I thought for a second that I’d be disappointed if Spacemacs was not the subject, but I’m actually pretty pleasantly surprised. This looks like fun. It kind of looks like you’ve taken Emacs and given it a storymode. I think I could actually get a few of my friends who are not really into programming to actually play, which is cool.
This is such a cool game concept! I would also argue that Lua is in a lot of ways a very suitable choice for this interaction, especially considering its flexibility in how and when modules get loaded and reloaded at runtime.
Also, being a constantly delighted user of the LÖVE framework, I was especially happy to see it being used here as well :)
(Original author here.) Thanks! While the player’s computer is initially configured by writing Lua code, there is also a lisp->lua compiler in the game (https://github.com/meric/l2l) that you will eventually need to learn how to use, and I plan on integrating at least 2 other different languages beyond that; right now I’m thinking of Forth and possibly Lily.
Awesome! What made you chose Forth and Lily?
I chose Forth because it’s easy to implement in Lua itself, which will make interfacing between the two languages a lot easier. But I also want to include a language with a decent static type system (one with type inference and no nulls).
In this case implementing my own is out of the question, so I need to find one that (like Lua) is designed for embedding inside another language. Most of the time with static languages it is not that difficult to embed a program you’ve written in another language, but embedding the whole compiler is incredibly complicated. Lily is the only static language I can find designed for embedding the whole thing, and while I disagree with some of its design decisions (like only implementing type inference for locals and one-use lambdas), it’s a much better fit than anything else I could find.
There is actually a project called Spacemacs (http://spacemacs.org - a combination of vim and Emacs. I quite like it, personally), which is what I thought this was going to be about, upon seeing the title. I thought for a second that I’d be disappointed if Spacemacs was not the subject, but I’m actually pretty pleasantly surprised. This looks like fun. It kind of looks like you’ve taken Emacs and given it a storymode. I think I could actually get a few of my friends who are not really into programming to actually play, which is cool.