Hacker News: rottytooth

New comment by rottytooth in "Velato"

rottytooth — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 17:45:23 +0000

Hi, I’m the creator of Velato, the programming language (which is at http://velato.net/ ). Velato multicodes with music, much like Piet does with images. The challenge is to write a piece that works musically and programmatically. I have some better example programs I’ll post when they’re released, by an actual composer (it sounds much better than my sample Hello World).

Meanwhile, there’s a variation of the language at http://velato.net/HandsFree/ where you can whistle code live into the browser, rather than using MIDI. It has a somewhat different lexicon and a very different feel.

New comment by rottytooth in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)"

rottytooth — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 23:28:37 +0000

I’m finishing several esolangs for the first artist’s monograph of programming languages, out in Sept: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553087/forty-four-esolangs/ including a hands-free (and not dictated) language.

I recently completed Valence: a language with polysemantic programs https://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Valence on GitHub: https://github.com/rottytooth/Valence

Older work includes Folders: code written as a pattern of folders: https://github.com/rottytooth/Folders , Entropy: where data decays each time it’s read from or written to: http://entropy-lang.org/ and Olympus: where code is written as prayer to Greek gods, who may or may not carry out your wishes: https://github.com/rottytooth/Olympus (a way to reverse the power structure of code, among other things).

I have three more to complete in the next few months.

New comment by rottytooth in "Source code art in the Rivulet language"

rottytooth — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 21:36:26 +0000

Yes, that's a typo: the first two strands have hooks pointing up, the third to the left.

I forgot to mention that you can run the interpreter with -p to convert the program to pseudo-code. This makes it much easier to tweak the examples and experiment. I'll add that to the readme, along with more pseudo-code for the example programs.

And thanks so much!! Very excited to publish (Sept 2025).

New comment by rottytooth in "Source code art in the Rivulet language"

rottytooth — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:27:21 +0000

The glyph start marker ╵ also marks a block of code; if several consecutive glyphs start with the same number of them, they are part of the same block.

When the question strand executes, it looks at whether a list element (or entire list) is zero or below. If so, the entire block is rolled back to its previous state.

So all branching is done as rollbacks. And loops end by rolling back their last iteration.

New comment by rottytooth in "Source code art in the Rivulet language"

rottytooth — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:12:04 +0000

Hi, I created this language as part of a series of experiments with bringing aspects of natural language into code. My previous language, Valence (https://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Valence), dealt with semantic ambiguity — this one with calligraphy. It avoids an overly logical syntax in favor of compactness and expressiveness.

I’m completing a book of these esolangs for MIT Press this fall including this; not much info yet online yet but here’s the link: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553087/forty-four-esolangs/