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Demo: Base language, compile-time execution

Jonathan Blow · 163.6K views · 2014-10-31 · 2:07:18

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Overview

Jonathan Blow demos his prototype programming language, covering the base language and compile-time execution, including running a game while compiling. The video is about 70 minutes of demo followed by Q&A.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as an early demonstration of compile-time code execution, predating its popularity in languages like Zig.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2015–2022

Topics

Programming language designCompilers, interpreters & program analysis
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jonathan blowjaicompile-time executiongame programminglanguage design

What people said

codetrotter · 2021-08 · Recommendation

Jonathan Blow’s programming language allows almost anything to execute during compilation as well. It’s neat. Here’s an old video where he demonstrated this: [VIDEO]

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Tozen · 2022-10 · Reference

> Zig's use of comptime is fairly revolutionary in a c-like language Not revolutionary. Before Zig came out, which was 2016, there was Jonathan Blow talking about and arguably repopularizing it. Lots of people (who knows how many developers) and languages were influenced by him too. 2014, Jonathan Blow, who made lots of videos and gave lots of talks, before going on to officially promote Jai (2016). And it appears he was playing around with prototypes much earlier and talking about it (from 2014). [VIDEO] (Demo: Base language, compile-time execution)

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atesti · 2018-07 · Reference

Sounds like what Jonathan Blow demoed in his new programming language JAI: [VIDEO] Execute a invaders game with OpenGl while compiling and embedding the score in the code (Just a demo, the idea is to replace makefiles with compile time execution, etc.)

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Sources

Video by Jonathan Blow, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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