Stuart Langridge2d ago
@kayserifserif OK, I feel a little like having to ask this means I’ve wholly missed the point. But I wrote a coem, and I’ve made myself happy by just reading it out loud to myself with the right cadence, but… it doesn’t work. Honestly, I’ve got all the joy I need by having even tried to do such a thing, so if you say: asking for _technical support _ means you have missed the point, man, then sorry. But should this work? It’s called “What we do next”, if that makes a difference.
Show threadkatherine2d ago

@sil hi Stuart, thank you so much for trying it out!!! don't worry at all and i'm sorry for the bumpy experience — the language isn't super well defined and the implementation is very patchy, so honestly, it's rare when it works at all :)

here is a version that seems to work! (though may or may not represent your intent, i'm not sure)

```
to wonder——:
let hope be maybe
if—hope—:
& “love”
& “sleep”.
.

let life be wonder——
† and what remains?
know—life—
```

i believe there were some missing dashes (at the if statement and `wonder` function call), and blocks are supposed to end with a period (if statement and `wonder` function definition). all of which is very unclear in the documentation and editor! i wanted to get error messages nicely displayed somewhere, but in the meantime if you do have trouble, opening the developer console might give you a hint as to what's breaking.

let me know if that works for you?

Show threadStuart Langridge2d ago
@kayserifserif aha! I forgot the full stops. Which you were clear about in the documentation, so that’s my fault.
It still reads the same way with the fixes! Well, except the em dashes in an “if”, which I also left out because I’m just too much a programmer to have thought of it :)
Can’t decide what I think about the editor showing error messages. It’d be helpful, but… it seems to fundamentally contradict the nature of the thing to robotically point out what you did wrong…
Show threadStuart Langridge2d ago

@kayserifserif and those fixes worked, indeed, thank you.

I have been instructed to choose love rather than sleep, so thank you for that, universe.

Show threadkatherine

@sil phew, i'm so glad that worked!! haha :)

yes, it's been a puzzle to figure out what to do with the error messages! i had grand visions of incorporating them as part of the poetry, but haven't really figured out how. i think it's the one part of programming (the idea that there is correctness and incorrectness and understanding how to conform to the syntax) that i'm not sure what to do with here yet.

i really appreciate your time exploring the project!

Mar 26 at 10:26pmWeb
Show threadStuart Langridge2d ago

@kayserifserif This has been really quite moving, to think of how to do poetry while programming. Or how to do programming while poetry. I'm not sure which.

I am terribly pleased that the ending, "know life", is all very self-affirming until you read it out loud and then it sounds like "no life".

This is not fishing for compliments. The poem's not written for anyone but me. But I'm happy that I did it, and happy that there was a tool to do it with; thank you for that.

Show threadkatherine2d ago
@sil wow, this is awesome!! thank you for sharing all of your thoughts on this 🥲