The LOLCODE forum

Hi all.

It's been one week since opening up lolcode.com for other people to check out. I have been absolutely stunned at the response since then. It's been frustrating however, because I couldn't spend time on the language and involving myself with the community nearly as much as I'd like. It's been cool to see that the community has coalesced and found directions of its own, but I wanted to set out some principles for the future of the language. I'm just one guy, but I hope you'll take some of these suggestions on board.

I was thinking about who LOLCODE, the language, was for. I knew that the website was for you all: clever people who were slightly bored. It look a bit of time before I realized: this language is for my daughter. Not as she is now (she's two), but who she'll be in two or three years: clever, slightly bored, and interested in making a computer do what she wants it to do.

When I realized that, everything else about the language fit into place. I would prefer that the future LOLCODE be:

* approachable (I like to think that the popularity of the language is at least partly due to the readability of the examples)
* funny (if the language doesn't cause someone to LOL at some point, then we're doing it wrong)
* teaching (there are very few languages remaining that really fulfill the role that BASIC did when I grew up)
* clean, in the sense of kid-safe (I'd prefer to leave some keywords out: while WTF, LMAO, and the like are fine, cockmongler and surprise buttsechs might have to be left out as keywords [variable names? go ahead!].)

Of all of the things that delighted me this week (and there were many), I think the Machine Project workshop pleased me the most, and pointed me towards the above conclusions. Beyond providing a fun diversion for some people, I would like this dumb joke to make programming a little bit more approachable. For further reference, I found this series of blog entries very interesting as well. I also remember programming in HyperTalk very fondly: programming in it was conversational and intuitive, but didn't go too far in terms of its efforts in being "English-like".


The fast development of multiple implementations has been amazing, and I think having that resource will be great for the language's future. However, something that should not be among the chief criteria in designing the language should be "easy to implement". I strongly believe that the implementors should not have the only voices in creating the language. So long as a construct is "reasonable" to implement (and hopefully providing an interesting problem), then it should not be off the table.

What I would like to see more of, as well, is good, funny, clear examples to enter into the canon. I tried to structure the first few examples on the website so that each introduced just a couple of concepts at a time. (Think of it this way: you're writing unit tests for all of the implementations.) It would be of immense value to the language if some people concentrated on extending those through the current, implementors' recommendation-1.0, and create some more documentation around that.


While I would love to preside, zefrank-like over this passionate, creative, intelligent community, and pour my own creative energies into making a more perfect LOLCODE, I just don't have enough hours in the day amongst my other duties. I would, however, like to be consulted on any language issues that are causing a deadlock in the community. I will also try to be a responsive webmaster, implementing things on the site in order to help you all do your thing.

adam

Discussion Here.