🥞 Pancake Programming Language

Pancake is an esoteric programming language that is conceptually split into two worlds -- alpha and omega. But don't worry, those are two sides of the same pancake 😉.

This project was concieved during the first Lang Jam with an amazing team of creative coders:

• Viktor the sharpvik
• Kyle the Kylebrown9
• Aleksi the aleksimart
• Holly the dejawuuu

NOTE: this site is an IDE for our language. Take a look at the Editor section to learn more!

Internals

Internally, Pancake runtime is a very simple stack machine that keeps track of the current world in which it's operating. Commands are executed top to bottom (although there are jumps) and if we are in the alpha world, all omega instructions are skipped (and vice versa).

You can flip, flip if true, or flip if false between the worlds to create conditional statements. That is what makes Pancake so special and yummy!

Syntax and Semantics

Here's an example of a simple program with world and stack state annotated for the first pass:

3               ; ALPHA [ 3 ]
{i}             ; ALPHA [ 3 {i} ]
bind            ; ALPHA [ ]                  { i = 3 }
i               ; ALPHA [ i ]                { i = 3 }

@ loop start

flip if false   ; ALPHA [ ]                  { i = 3 }
# loop end      ; skipped

"hello world"   ; ALPHA [ "hello world" ]    { i = 3 }
print           ; ALPHA [ ]                  { i = 3 }

i               ; ALPHA [ 3 ]                { i = 3 }
1               ; ALPHA [ 3 1 ]              { i = 3 }
-               ; ALPHA [ 2 ]                { i = 3 }
{i}             ; ALPHA [ 2 {i} ]            { i = 3 }
bind            ; ALPHA [ ]                  { i = 2 }

loop start

@ loop end      ; "loop end" is a label to which we can jump

This program will print hello world three times before halting forever. Here's what we can learn from looking at it:

1. Each line is an instruction.
2. Lines prefixed with @ are lables to which we can jump by writing their name on one of the lines.
3. Instructions in the alpha world are not prefixed, while omega instructions have a leading #.
4. Names like i can be put on the stack raw, without being evaluated if you wrap them in { }. This can be used to bind a variable or in higher order functions.
5. All names and their values are stored in a global namespace.

Editor

Key Bindings

• CTRL + ; = toggle help
• CTRL + ENTER = run source code checks and formatting
• SHIFT + ENTER = step through the code (debugger style)

Inspirations

You gotta give credit where credit's due!

• Editor color theme: Gruvbox Material
• Navigation bar: inspired by Elm online editor