Author Archives: Bill Wadge

When Lucid first came out decades ago it was a very primitive language. It had only program variables and built-in operators and functions, like next or fby. Users could not define their own functions (or “subroutines” as they were often … Continue reading →

It was developed in a secret lab and released, after which it spread rapidly. COVID? (maybe …). But I’m talking about the new PyFL interpreter. It’s finally available for the general public at pyflang.com To make things simple, in the form … Continue reading →

I wrote a program to play unbeatable tictactoe in my experimental functional language PYFL. (PYFL = Python based functional language; henceforth PyFL) Of course writing a tictactoe player is hardly a major challenge, but I wanted to see how it … Continue reading →

A very long time ago I had an interesting if flawed idea. The idea was to (optionally) replace instances of expression constructs with equations defining or referring to components of conventional compound structures. The special variables defined or used I … Continue reading →

Recently my friend Michael Levy had a very clever idea. It was to publish cheaper versions of well-known books, the idea being that they would be basically the same but slightly altered to avoid copyright problems. For example, Ray Bradbury’s … Continue reading →

As I’ve explained I invented and implemented a small functional language (PYFL) to test out some ideas. In particular one idea is the (oxymoronic) functional while loop. A while loop? In a functional language? “Impossible!” you snort. Well you’re wrong. … Continue reading →

As I’ve already explained I’ve invented and implemented an experimental functional language – PyFL (Python based Functional Language) – to try out some ideas. For example, PyFL has a full set of Variable Binding Operators (VBOs) that use a linear … Continue reading →

As I already explained, I’ve invented and implemented a simple functional language (PYFL) with a few interesting twists. Including a promising but simple approach to input.

Haskell has been both a blessing and a curse for Functional Programming (FP.) A blessing because it has allowed many thousands to experience FP firsthand – by writing functional programs. They’ve discovered that it’s not that hard, that you can … Continue reading →

[This reports on research carried out in collaboration with my PhD student Monem Shennat and former student Omar Alaqeeli] Dimensionality is a big issue with multidimensional Lucid – it means figuring out which dimensions are relevant to calculating the values … Continue reading →