[Icfp04-discuss] Visualisation

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Finn Wilcox wrote:

> Sounds familiar.  I devised a C-like language for my ant but couldn't
> get the compiler finished in time.  It included do, while, switch,
> functions and simulated variables, even structs and enums. Surprisingly
> I never ran out of states, but then I only spent about an hour on the
> ant itself. Perhaps too elaborate for a 72 hour task.
>
> Did anyone else try something similar?

I think most functional language entries used an embedded language of some
form. Ours used monadic combinators which gave us most of the above (but
not state; with some better design initially it would have done). I think
I spent about 6 hours on it initially, then fixed bits and pieces during
the rest of the time. It helped a lot that the backend was rock-solid from
the beginning - incapable of producing invalid ants.

Cheers,

Ganesh