Birb: Programming with bird emojis

https://esolangs.org/wiki/Birb

by marvinborner • 3 years ago

174 28 3 years ago

esolangs.org

arpanetus• 3 years ago

I see that author used these Combinator Birds or Birbs [1].

[1] https://www.angelfire.com/tx4/cus/combinator/birds.html

ufo• 3 years ago

Which goes back to Raymond Smullyan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird

ianbutler• 3 years ago

The fact there isn't a crow (or other corvids) is a crime. Otherwise I enjoy this immensely.

marvinborner4• 3 years ago

The only emoji that comes close to a crow is probably the black bird ⬛ (edit: hn does not seem to render this?). Unfortunately, it's a joined letter and therefore can't be parsed/typed that easily.

Other than that the combinators that I would have liked to match are vireo, warbler, thrush, lark, jay, hummingbird, (gold-)finch and becard - all of these don't have emojis.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

Also, looks like that Birb is from 2021 - the black bird emoji only showed up last year.

butlersean2• 3 years ago

This language would work well in the universe of the fictional absurdist documentary “the falls”

The Falls — Greenaway / Nyman

https://youtu.be/dTKNMR9KDZg?si=BR521zn3VsK6zTEF

defrost2• 3 years ago

What is it with birds, Greenaway & Nyman?

Angelfish Decay | Swan Rot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TBNvlyjTQg

butlersean2• 3 years ago

It’s because Birds aren’t real. https://birdsarentreal.com/

wint3rmute• 3 years ago

Reminds me of a similar project by Devine Lu Linvenga: https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/logic.html

pqdbr• 3 years ago

I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at, but I love it.

gilcot• 3 years ago

It's flying lovely :D

isoprophlex• 3 years ago

Birbs stagger as they walk: they are reduced in alternating associative order, starting with left associativity at birb index ⌊len/2⌋

Big oof

mFixman• 3 years ago

Birbs stagger as they walk: they are reduced in alternating associative order, starting with left associativity at birb index ⌊len/2⌋:

    BB -> (BB)
    BBB -> ((BB)B)
    BBBB -> (B((BB)B))
    BBBBB -> ((B((BB)B))B)
    BBBBBB -> (B((B((BB)B))B))
    BBBBBBB -> ((B((B((BB)B))B))B)
   ...

This is the worst operations order I've ever seen and I love it so much.

toth2• 3 years ago

Wow, this is (evil) genius. It suggests all sorts of obnoxious "features" for esolangs:

- Order of operations depends on number of terms in more complicated manner.

- Order of operations depends on data? This would make compiling the language basically impossible, but you could probably get away with it in an interpreter.

- Parenthesis have side effects, in addition to changing order of operations.

lifthrasiir2• 3 years ago

Order of operations depends on data? This would make compiling the language basically impossible, but you could probably get away with it in an interpreter.

This is not even a hypothetical feature. There is at least one language which used a type information to resolve associativity [1]. I have even used one, it works, but was very hard to get accustomed for me.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1596655.1596667 (especially search for "juxtaposition")

junon• 3 years ago

This is absolutely hilarious. I have a parrot and just reading this cracks me up.

gus_massa• 3 years ago

Isn't it equivalent to the clockwise/spiral rule in C declarations?

https://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775735 (225 points | October 2016 | 69 comments)

wmal• 3 years ago

I'm now waiting for a discovery, that hieroglyphs not only told some stories, but represented ancient algorithms in a programming language similar to this one.

lifthrasiir2• 3 years ago

You will appreciate this image: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wenyan-lang/wenyan/master/... [1]

[1] https://github.com/wenyan-lang/wenyan

numlock86• 3 years ago

No goose but the wing? Disappointing.

marvinborner4• 3 years ago

Oh no, I can't believe I missed that!

I think I like the wing for the phoenix combinator actually. What other combinator could the goose be matched with? Hmm...

petepete• 3 years ago

Perhaps the authors didn't want decades of people being confused between swans and geese, like they are between 0 and O.

beeforpork• 3 years ago

Can we see '99 bottles of beer' in Birb, please?

marvinborner4• 3 years ago

Should be easy now, I implemented a lambda calculus to birb transpiler. The resulting program would be huge (like several MBs), though.

Birb: Programming with bird emojis

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