[HN Gopher] Mystical
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Mystical
Author : mmphosis
Score : 345 points
Date : 2025-05-17 18:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (suberic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (suberic.net)
| anpep wrote:
| Reminds me of japanese anime Denno Coil, where kids would draw
| computer programs almost exactly like the author's on the floor
| and invoke them as some kind of enchantement. Highly recommend
| it!
| blkhawk wrote:
| I loved that show. It showed how children deal with new
| technology different from how adults deal with it. It predated
| even google glass by half a decade.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I should rewatch that. There's many shows that get worse over
| time, but I just don't think anything has changed in regards
| to DC. Even now it'll seem like pure magic, but just close
| enough to believable you might see it in your lifetime.
|
| Of course my lifetime has marched on relentlessly since I
| first saw it.
| cardamomo wrote:
| I came here to say exactly the same thing! What a great show.
| roymurdock wrote:
| Awesome.
| philodeon wrote:
| Dude, the Laundry is trying to relax on the weekend. Don't make
| them call the Plumbers out.
| spauldo wrote:
| I suspect the new management has them occupied.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| One of the Phang's or the 1st of Liars should be free though.
| joisig wrote:
| Very cool!
| anthk wrote:
| Torres Quevedo did it first but with symbols on mechanic hardware
| and processes.
|
| Also, Babbage with literal gears. Look up for electromechanical
| computation.
| tehasem wrote:
| cool!!!
| ryandv wrote:
| More on chaos magick and sigil casting 101:
| https://archive.org/details/the-psychonaut-field-manual
| Sharlin wrote:
| This must be the preferred programming language of the
| otherworldly main character of Aphyr's "Xing the technical
| interview" sequence of blog posts [1]. Would definitely deserve
| its own entry in the series.
|
| [1] https://aphyr.com/posts/354-unifying-the-technical-interview
| awanderingmind wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this, thanks for posting! Very amusing.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I would actually _love_ to use this for a programming interview
| in real life.
| aspizu wrote:
| This is neography meets conlang. Love it. I would really love to
| see a unique programming language that uses a constructed
| language with a beautiful script. I had the idea of making one
| but I never got around to it.
| tines wrote:
| Holy shit this is awesome. Absolutely beautiful.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I call upon the blood-moon goddess, for I have but one request.
| I've laid the altar, charged the crystals, the circle, I have
| blessed. PLEASE boot this time.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Knock the candle from scripture stack
| hojinkoh wrote:
| Couldn't think of any applications of this outside of doing
| actual magic. But this is awesome still!
| globalnode wrote:
| This has uses right? A prettier form of QR code? Would be a tad
| difficult to decode automatically but I definitely like the
| combination of aesthetics with logic.
| fatbird wrote:
| For game purposes I've been looking up alchemical and mystical
| symbols, and I've been frustrated that, while there's a lot of
| references of symbols, alphabets, etc. themselves, there's little
| or no presentation of a grammar that would direct one in creating
| larger diagrams that look like this. This is amazing. It's deeply
| pleasing that code, represented systematically, would be so
| aesthetically pleasing.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Very cute. If you squint, it's almost APL written in a circles.
| gonepivoting wrote:
| Very cool - it reminds me of some of the programming-language-
| like magic systems in Sanderson's books, especially AonDor in
| Elantris and Lines in The Rithmatist.
| ElectroSlayer wrote:
| Oh you're gonna love this rabbit hole:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/145teoz/isaac_and_the...
| leke wrote:
| The sigil feel of this feels like the premise of a movie
| faresahmed wrote:
| It has been kind of made into a movie! The Heptapods [0] in
| Arrival (2016) written script is a circular shape with each
| subsection of the shape conveying a different meaning
| ultimately representing a concept or thought. A quote from the
| movie:
|
| > Like their ship or their bodies, their written language has
| no forward or backward direction. Linguists call this
| "nonlinear orthography", which raises the question: Is this how
| they think?
|
| While the movie explores philosophical questions other than
| "Arrival" and does a quiet beautiful job at that, actual
| linguistic experts have helped making it and it has been
| praised for its accuracy. I suggest you give it a go.
|
| [0]: https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Heptapod
| rgovostes wrote:
| BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
| open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
| write it, print the hex while each watches, reverse
| its length, write again; kill spiders, pop them,
| chop, split, kill them. unlink arms, shift, wait
| & listen (listening, wait), ...
|
| -- Anonymous, "Black Perl"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl
| oersted wrote:
| This actually seems rather usable! It is rare that an esolang
| focused on aesthetics is so readable and relatively easy to use.
|
| And this idea can probably be applied for any Lisp-like, any
| stack based language or array language.
|
| With the right structured editor, it could be used for legitimate
| programming, it might even be more compact and readable at a
| glance than some code.
| stared wrote:
| PostScript (with its reverse Polish notation) rewires brain on
| its own (it is top 1 in languages that "made me think different).
| Adding esoteric visuals is a nice touch.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Other languages please? Would be cool to have a rewire your
| brain, and train you briefly in things like ps and lisp.
| stared wrote:
| Every language rewired my brain, as you need to think in a
| different way. But nothing felt like using PostScript. I
| guess if I tried to use Assembly (well, my only experience is
| through playing Shenzhen I/O), the difference would be even
| more profound.
|
| For many people, functional languages were a big paradigm
| shift. For me, not so much -- my background is in mathematics
| and theoretical physics, so the functional way is the default
| way of doing things. So, for me, the functional approach (be
| it in JavaScript or Rust) brings comfort rather than
| enlightenment.
|
| It's always contextual, based on what you already know. Maybe
| if someone speaks German natively, PostScript comes more
| naturally -- who knows.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Declarative languages are fun. Prolog is the iconic one. You
| may be more familiar with Make.
|
| For OO, every serious software engineer should read The Art
| of the Metaobject Protocol sometime in their lives.
| anthk wrote:
| Forth. Get Starting Forth and Thinking Forth.
| sn9 wrote:
| Link: https://www.forth.com/forth-books/
| tauoverpi wrote:
| This is incredible, what's the license of the work? A derivative
| of this (using a forth-like with only recursion) would be perfect
| for the current game project where I'm lacking a visual
| representation of spells (both written and animated). Mystical
| provides the missing piece of the puzzle of how users could write
| their own spells in a structured way within the game and still
| feel as if it's part of the game world with the same kind of
| thinking as in regular programming.
| miohtama wrote:
| Noita has similar want building system for constructing spells
| in a wand in programmatic way with repeats, multiplies,
| duplicating and such:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/881100/Noita/
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| This is the coolest thing I've seen in years.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Hah, who's the wizard now, APL programmers?
| spencerflem wrote:
| I've been working on one of these too! Mine's based on Dusa, a
| logic lang which has the nice property that the order of
| instructions don't matter. This gives a lot of options for making
| really expressive, dense runes but making a program that lays it
| out automatically has been challenging. It's also nowhere near as
| readable as Mystical for better or worse.
|
| Here's a sample that plays Rock Paper Scissors:
| https://sunny.garden/@spenc/113870784615196721
| em-bee wrote:
| it does look just as beautiful though.
| areeh wrote:
| Oh wow, I had to try this and as expected it's amazing. Trying to
| design interesting algorithms that also look good is a lot of
| fun, and the result is surprisingly readable.
|
| It takes some getting used to symbols that can be confused when
| upside down such as b or brackets (like the symbols for
| begin/end)
|
| Like others I am curious about doing it for a lisp or Forth
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(page generated 2025-05-18 23:00 UTC)