Show HN: I made a "programming language" looking for feedback
by alonsovm on 3/29/2026, 6:35:58 PM
https://github.com/alonsovm44/glupe
Comments
by: JoeAltmaier
I wrote a programming language, some time back. You need a good reason to add to the tumult in the marketplace, and I thought I had one. My language was for discrete control systems. You could declare samplers for data values (interval, sensor, type) and name them as variables. You could create control actions by listing a set of one or more sampler variables in brackets. Once there were 'fresh' values for all of the samplers, the action would be invoked.<p>It had the usual functions and i/o library stuff. In fact I wrote a tool to absorb other library headers e.g. C or C++ and product blocks that my compiler could link with, and voila your program could call those external libraries.<p>We used it for a couple of contracts. Some of the control engineers were enthusiastic; some not so much. One more thing to learn.
3/29/2026, 9:28:03 PM
by: ivanjermakov
> 2. Not deterministic<p>I understand why that's the case, and I believe this is the main hurdle for adoption of a tool like this.
3/29/2026, 11:01:08 PM
by: Chance-Device
But… why not just write pseudo code, or any language you actually know, and just ask the AI to port it to the language you want? That’s a serious question by the way, is there some use case here I’m not seeing where learning this new syntax and running this actually helps instead of being extra steps nobody needs?
3/29/2026, 9:14:43 PM
by: Retr0id
I've been thinking about something along these lines, but coupled with deterministic inference. At each "macro" invocation you'd also include hash-of-model, and hash-of-generated-text. (Note, determinism doesn't require temperature 0, so long as you can control the rng seed. But there are a lot of other things that make determinism hard)<p>You could take it a step further and have a deterministic agent inside a deterministic VM, and you can share a whole project as {model hash, vm image hash, prompt, source tree hash} and have someone else deterministically reproduce it.<p>Is this useful? Not sure. One use case I had in mind as a mechanism for distributing "forbidden software". You can't distribute software that violates DMCA, for example, but can you distribute a prompt?
3/29/2026, 8:53:15 PM
by: bdcravens
I've found that writing pseudocode in a markdown file with little to no definitions (I may put a few non-obvious notes in the CLAUDE/AGENTS files) and telling the agent what language to turn it into generally works.
3/29/2026, 8:52:43 PM
by: zahlman
So instead of auto-completing bits of LLM-generated code into the codebase, you preprocess it in. I can imagine a lot of devs won't like the ergonomics of that, but I like the idea that you can keep both original .glp and generated source files in version control.<p>I'd strongly recommend going over the README by hand. What you currently have is redundant and disorganized, and header sizes/depths don't make a lot of sense. The "manual build" instructions should also describe the dependencies that the install script is setting up.
3/29/2026, 6:57:46 PM
by: bojanstef4
did you know "glup" (pronounced gloop) in serbian means "stupid"
3/29/2026, 7:57:51 PM
by: kgeist
Glupe means "stupid" in Slavic languages, was it on purpose?
3/29/2026, 9:13:13 PM
by: whoamii
Why didn’t you implement this in… Glupe?
3/29/2026, 9:11:25 PM
by: empressplay
I agree that some form of shorthand between pseudocode and actual code would be really useful to improve accuracy on LLM requests but I don't think this is quite it. Ideally it would be as simple as possible, but not rely on language-specific paradigms. Sort of a pidgin that everyone would understand, that used white space and indentation to indicate things like loops and such. Something a normal person could look at and still largely comprehend.
3/29/2026, 10:30:13 PM
by: mpalmer
The language feels like a solution in search of a problem, and the mostly-generated README reduces my confidence in the quality of the project before I've even learned that much about it.<p>One example:<p><pre><code> Best of all, they work together. You can store your .glp blueprints in a Docker container—creating software that is immortal in both environment and logic. </code></pre> This is nonsensical. The entire point of a container is it ought to contain only what's necessary to run the underlying software. It's just the production filesystem. Why would I put LLM prompts that don't get used at runtime in a container?<p>What other language-agnostic methods of describing complex systems is your project inspired by? In competition with?<p>---<p>By using this tool, a programmer or team is sending the message that:<p>"We expect LLM generated code to remain a deeply coupled part of our delivery process, indefinitely"<p>But we didn't know about LLMs 5 years ago. What is the argument for defining your software in a way that depends on such a young technology? Most of the "safety" features here are related to how <i>unsafe</i> the tech itself still is.<p>"Nontrivial LLM driven rewrites of the code are expected, even encouraged"<p>Why is the speedy rewriting of a system in a new language such a popular flex these days? Is it because it looks impressive, and LLMs make it easy? It's so silly.<p>And if the language allows for limiting the code the LLM is allowed to modify, how is it going to help us keep our overall project language-agnostic?
3/29/2026, 8:28:35 PM
by: TZubiri
Some feedback, in order from most to least important:<p>> 1- installing with irm <a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alonsovm44/glupe/master/install.ps1" rel="nofollow">https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alonsovm44/glupe/master/in...</a> | iex<p>That is high risk, don't ask people to do that, especially when it's completely unnecessary for what the language is, and the language isn't providing value, it's just esoterical.<p>>2. "Glupe isolates AI logic into semantic containers, so your manual code stays safe."<p>Watchout for light-AI psychosis. This existed before AI to be fair, but using words in a way that doesn't convey meaning. Maybe what's going on is that you use them with ChatGPT and it either understands or doesn't but follow along. So make sure to prioritize language that you develop with humans, not AI. And try to simplify your language and the message you were trying to convey, because you missed bigtime with that sentence.<p>>3. The language itself misses the mark. It looks like it's C++ with some modifications?<p>4- it's also not a language but a terminal? Try to get the trust of your users by doing one thing well before promising to do it all. A bit of humility pays off, you can't do everything anyways.
3/29/2026, 10:10:52 PM