Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by chocochunks on Sunday March 08, 2026 @06:14PM
(#47302165)
Does this work with real candy?
Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by mufeedvh on Sunday March 08, 2026 @09:08PM
(#47303600)
Yes! Just make sure to take a photo on a plain white surface is all.
With:
uv run mnm decompile path/to/photo.png --mode photo
Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by berlinquin on Sunday March 08, 2026 @08:54PM
(#47303483)
Fun project! I had a similar project a while back, but my medium of choice was the Uno card game. I called it UnoScript [1] and it had similar mechanisms as color was an important factor. I also ended with a stack as the main part of the language, where different colors/combinations of cards could read from/modify the stack. Interesting how similar constraints can lead to some similar design choices!
Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by AdieuToLogic on Sunday March 08, 2026 @10:09PM
(#47304059)
Great post, thanks for sharing it!
When I saw the title, I thought of Lambda Calculus[0] and SKI combinators[1]. Given that there are "only six useful colors", I wonder if M&Ms could be used to implement them.
Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by mufeedvh on Monday March 09, 2026 @01:16AM
(#47305134)
Funny you mention that, because yes, a combinator-style encoding is probably a cleaner fit for the “only six colors constraint than my stack machine. I hacked together a tiny SKI-flavored M&M reducer as a proof of concept: B=S, G=K, R=I, Y=(, O=), and N... is a free atom, so `B G G NNN` reduces to `a2`.
Gist: https://gist.github.com/mufeedvh/db930a423fdce8c1d8e495c7a3f...
Re:I made a programming language with M&Ms
by AdieuToLogic on Monday March 09, 2026 @10:09PM
(#47318347)
That is too cool, thanks again for sharing your exploration.
I suppose the only question remaining is if peanut M&Ms are higher-kinded when contrasted with the chocolate-only nullary type.
:-D
This makes the world a better place. I got a little oxytocin hit just from the thought that somewhere on this world, someone is working on this problem. Now I'll be kinder to old ladies and give those poor puppies a pass.
Sharing a bit of backstory on why I decided to work on this; Firstly, “for fun” but primarily because I felt like I started losing the childlike wonder/whimsy I once had with programming.
So I started this new hobby where I ask myself “can I hack on this?” upon getting/seeing something.
For instance, I got this new Aula F75 keyboard (really good keyboard for the price btw, it sounds good too!) and it only has dedicated control software for Windows. So I downloaded the driver files, software executable, and manual sheet and reverse engineered the full protocol/packets and rebuilt it for my Mac. Then played snake with the backlights. Fun.
Anywho, happy to see my blog on the front page. Would love to hear if anyones going through something similar or working on silly little projects! :)