andormade/8f4e

8f4e is stack-oriented programming language with a semi-visual live code editor designed for generating and processing real-time audio signals.

Welcome to what I refer to as my biggest “mental masturbation” project. This whole thing started because I like creating problems just to experience the satisfaction of solving them. It doesn't really serve a bigger purpose or offer much to the public, and honestly, there's probably better stuff out there for the same job.

8f4e

8f4e is a stack-oriented programming language with a semi-visual interface designed for making generative music on algorave events. One of its unique features is its representation of pointers using interconnected wires.

Other distinctive features:

• The syntax and commands of 8f4e were inspired by assembly languages, but instead of the typical cryptic mnemonics like cndjmp, 8f4e uses more descriptive operation names such as branchIfTrue.
• The code is organized into modules, each containing variable declarations and a sequence of commands.
• It supports real-time manual modification of variable values while the program is running, without needing recompilation.
• In 8f4e, variables which are declared one after another in the code are allocated at memory addresses that follow each other. For example, if an int foo is at the 256th byte, then the int bar declared next will be at the 260th byte, assuming a word size of 4 bytes.
• Arrays in 8f4e always occupy contiguous spaces in memory, allowing for straightforward and efficient iteration.
• All variables in 8f4e are inherently public, with no option to modify visibility.
• Runtime memory allocation is not supported in 8f4e; developers must pre-plan their software's memory needs during the coding process. This design choice, favoring performance and efficiency, also ensures that memory addresses remain predictable.
• The language utilizes C-style pointer notations and introduces a new notation: array& that retrieves the address of the last word in an array.
• It's not memory safe, pointers can point to anything within the memory space of the program, but the wires help developers to find where their pointers are pointing.
• The execution order of various code modules is determined by their dependencies. If a module's output is needed as input for others, it is executed first. This creates a sequential flow, where each module executes only after receiving the necessary data from a preceding module's output. This dependency-based ordering ensures that each module gets the necessary data at the right time for the entire system to function effectively.
• For performance reasons, 8f4e does not include transcendental functions in its standard library. Instead, it encourages the use of polynomial approximations for these functions.
• It's Turing complete, but good luck implementing anything like trigonometric functions.

Questions that no one actually asked

Why the stack-oriented design?

The natural environment for 8f4e are virtual machines like WebAssembly, which often use a stack machine architecture. Stack machines have fewer hardware dependencies than register-based machines, making them easier to port to different platforms. A programming language that is designed with a stack-oriented approach can perform operations on the stack in a manner that is both efficient and natural, with instructions that can be easily mapped to those of the stack machine.

What do you mean by semi-visual interface?

Visual programming languages use graphical elements, such as icons, symbols, and flowcharts, to represent programming concepts and logic, instead of traditional text-based code. 8f4e combines these graphical elements with text-based code.

Where does the name 8f4e come from?

Okay, this one is actually asked a lot. I wrote a script to hunt down the shortest available .com domains, and 8f4e was one that caught my eye because it only included digits and letters from the hexadecimal system. When I registered it, I still had no idea what I would use it for. The project came later, and I picked this domain name for the website. Later, I found out that it's the UTF-8 code for the Chinese character "轎," which means "litter" (a human-powered vehicle, not cat litter or rubbish).