M contents/articles/hex.md → contents/articles/hex.md

@@ -72,12 +72,104 @@ - json
 
 I hope that _lexical scoping_ in the _nice to have_ made you chuckle. I know it would be bad, but _technically_ you wouldn't really need lexical scoping, really, especially in case of a concatenative programming language where you don't necessarily need variables.
 
-I decided to put this into practice when creating hex. And that's why, hex:
+I decided to put this into practice when designing hex. And that's why, hex:
 
 - supports only integers, strings, and lists (quotations). It doesn't have floats or dictionaries, even.
-- it comes with 64 native symbol for basic stuff, and lets you define your own (global) symbols, to store data and also define the equivalent of functions.
-- _everything_ and I mean, literally everything from flow control to error handling and I/O is done by applying symbols on the stack.
+- comes with 64 native symbol for basic stuff, and lets you define your own (global) symbols, to store data and also define the equivalent of functions.
+- uses symbols applied on the stack for _everything_ and I mean, literally everything from flow control to error handling and I/O.
+
+And that's it. It doesn't implement _any_ of the nice-to-haves. I am also planning of keeping the number of native symbols fixed as well, and maybe implement a sort of standard library in hex itself.
+
+### Artificial Inception
+
+But but but... last time I checked, I didn't know how to program in C anymore, right? It's not that I can magically start writing decent C code from a day to the next, certainly not enough to write a parser, and interpreter, and things like that.
+
+Or, maybe...
+
+I cheated a little bit. Everyone is always talking about AI, how it is changing the world, how it can do X and how there won't be a need for Y anymore. There is definitely an element of hype in all that, but undeniably Large Language Models have been quite a breakthrough. Now, it's not that ChatGPT is really intelligent or 100% reliable, but I hadn't been using it for a few weeks and I was surprised to notice the improvements.
+
+I started off innocently, expecting just some pointers and some pseudocode:
+
+> Implement a simple parser for a really simple stack-based concatenative programming language an able to process integer numbers and common arithmetic operations, for example:
+> 1 3 4 * + 2 -
+> Should result in 11 being pushed on the stack.
+
+It blurted out a Python implementation (no matter what, ChatGPT will *always* go to Python if you ask it to code something without specifying the language).
+
+> Provide a C implementation 
+
+And it did... I didn't try the code, but continued asking it to add support for strings and kept asking. I was surprised that it could _keep the context_ for as long as it could. Then it started hallucinating more frequently, but at the end of the day, I was left with a good enough implementation of a basic interpreted concatenative programming language. Which _actually compiled_ and worked, for the most part!
 
+→ [hex's artificial inception (ChatGPT chat)](https://chatgpt.com/share/6765d6b6-d2bc-8013-b91b-297f4d1c3b14)
 
+I kept tinkering with it for a while, and then decided to create a new [repo](https://github.com/h3rald/hex) for it. 
 
+After a few days, I found myself reading a lot of C code. Timidly, I started writing more and more myself... when I didn't remember something (memory allocation, pointer arithmetic), I decided to ask ChatGPT for explanations, summaries, cheat sheets... I was re-learning C!
+
+Now, earlier I said that _I cheated a little bit_. Using AI to write code still feels a little bit like cheating, sure, but it is important to remember that _it is nothing more than a tool_.
+
+There are plenty of issues with it, a lot of ethical ones as well, but at the end of the day, AI is here to stay, and we'd better get the most out of it. 
+
+I think getting my little project bootstrapped with AI was an interesting experience, and it was very useful for two things, mainly:
 
+- Take care of the boring, mechanical parts of the project
+- Act as a personal tutor for learning more about C
+
+Again, not an infallible tutor, but still better than nothing. And faster than skimming through a book or Stack Overflow for an answer for a question.
+
+Using AI for programming is not cheating, no more than using Stack Overflow is. 
+
+At any rate, overall positive experience. The best thing I got out of it was a better knowledge of the C programming language: I am now more confident and I can actually program in C a bit, and understand it. Better than I did in a long time, anyway.
+
+### #DecemberAdventure 
+
+It took me about 15 days of sporadic ChatGPT interactions alternated with also sporadic (and short) coding sessions to get the basics of the language implemented. At the beginning of December, I then decided to take part in [#DecemberAdventure](/https://eli.li/december-adventure) and work on hex of course! You can read more about it [here](/articles/dec-adv-2024).
+
+The funny thing is that most of the design (and implementation) of the language was kinda there already, and still I managed to create more of an ecosystem around it.
+
+Today, hex:
+
+- Has its own web site at <https://hex.2c.fyi>, with its own browser-based [playground](https://hex.2c.fyi/play), a [tutorial](https://hex.2c.fyi/learn), and even a [specification](https://hex.2c.fyi/spec).
+- It runs on different platforms, and can be compiled to WebAssembly to an  [αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε](https://justine.lol/ape.html)
+- Has a virtual machine, comprised of a simple but fully-functional bytecode compiler and interpreter
+
+The thing is... I have never achieved a lot of these things with min. But with hex I started (and remained) small, and that was the key.
+
+### Minimalism, distilled
+
+Syntactically speaking, the language is very similar to min. I always quite liked min's distinctive lispy flavor without actually being a lisp, its simple way of doing things without many special forms.
+
+Take this program for example:
+
+```
+; Print a list of squares!
+(0x1 0x2 0x3)
+  (
+    "i" :
+    "The square of " i str " is " i i * str
+    cat cat cat puts
+    "i" #
+  )
+each
+```
+
+Sure, it is a bit verbose, but if i tell you that:
+
+- ; is used to start line comments 
+- Things are pushed on the stack from left to right 
+- Things within parenthesis are quotations (lists) of other things
+- Strings are delimited by double quotes
+- Integers are prefixed with 0x
+- Everything else is a symbol, and unlike other things, when they are not inside a quotation they disappear from the stack and manipulate it in some way
+
+You basically already know the language syntax and how it works. 
+
+You basically have literals that get pushed on the stack, or symbols that manipulate it, just that.
+
+You may want to know that the `:` symbol is used to define other symbols and that the `#` destroys them, and that the `cat` symbol pops two strings from the stack and pushes back a concatenation of the two... sure, you can learn all of hex [64 native symbols](https://hex.2c.fyi/spec#native-symbols), but as I mentioned earlier, there are no statements or expressions or special forms: everything is either a literal that gets pushed on the stack, or a symbol that manipulates it.
+
+Well, there you have it. Yet another programming language that you'll never use.
+
+Everyone is creating programming language these days, and now with AI even people that normally wouldn't will be able to, imagine that.
+
+Still, this has been, and it will continue to be, a very rewarding experience. And maybe, just maybe, this new little thing called hex can teach someone something new (concatenative programming) or even be used to write some very cryptic shell script.