Today we went over some more grammars in Ramsey’s class involving some more complex abstract syntax trees. He also shed some light on how languages are written in themselves, like C being written in C, and how that process works. Basically, you do always some start with some host language that is different and then write a grammar/parser and other more complex logic in the host language to create a net new language that is turing complete. From there, since your new language is turing complete, you can rewrite some of the more high level concepts from your new language in itself, and then feed it back in. At this point, the host language sort of disappears from the workflow. Your net new language would be compiled into the original host language though. Pretty crazy…I never thought there’d be a point in my life where I actually had an idea about how C was written in C. He also introduced us to quines, programs whose outputs are its own source code. If you want your mind blown, check out the quine relay project.

Later in the day, Zan invited some of her friends over to the school and faciliated a conversation about wearable technology. David Jay is part of a team at the Samsung accelerator working on smartwatches and Maddy Maxey is the CTO at The Crated which focuses on the wearable tech space as well. I really enjoyed the conversation - I felt like it gave me inspiration for a space where my skills and enjoyment in sewing and fashion can meet technology. I’m still not sold on smartwatches though…

Franc did share a pretty nice idea with us for a project he was thinking about starting called Trainfuck. This is a new programming language inspired by the esoteric programming language called Brainfuck. The concept is that the language is built by subway transit, so riding trains in a certain way will create/execute the program. He’s planning to execute Hello World this weekend on the trains. It’s a really clever idea and I’m excited to learn more about its development.