Mind Migration: Orcas / Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and LOLCODE.net

aka: I CAN HAS EAT FREEWILLY NOW?

before reading this: note I am a scripter at best; and am learning C# and all the Microsoft tools. I know more than I’ve done which means I am super dangerous. Doing this is purely an experiment in what is possible, not what really should be done to ensure that the world cools down so whales don’t get eaten by Orcas.

Why LOLCODE.net? Does the world really need another obscure programming language?

Why doesn’t the world have one standard language. You know, like French or English?

The brain is a strange thing. Language helps people communicate ideas, or memes, from one person to another.

Programming Languages are more formalised as they map to a very binary computer underneath. No memes here.

Making a programming language from a meme is an attempt to bridge the LULZ we have in our head to the mundane art of punching in zeros and ones. Esoteric programming languages r0x0rz. 

Enough esoteric blathering on languages as noone cares and onto my personal LOLCODE  journey.

http://lolcode.com/ is LOLCODE central, where the language is being formally specified (more formally than Ruby, albeit less functional. Pun, get it?)

Orcas. Sort of like a black-and-white cat of the sea that eats seals, but has no paws. Orcas are pretty smart beasties. Love eating the tongues of whales. Funny code name for Visual Studio 2008. For this, I’ve installed beta 2.

LOLCode.net. Grab the .zip file from the archive and pop into a directory “c:program fileslolcode”

Readme.txt:
This distribution includes the compiler (lolc.exe), compiler library (lolcode.net.dll),
standard library (stdlol.dll) and code samples.

Read the readme. Hmm, according to the Readme and the LOLCODE forum, “We’d need MSBuild support and a VS extension“. Quick live.com search on msbuild. Ah, msbuild is a build platform. Gotcha. Visual Studio extention.  Now that looks harder.

Might just stick to the documentation and use command line. Firstly, let’s stick the directory into my %PATH%

OK, run cmd

type cd c:Program FilesLOLcode

Let’s be brace and just lolc fulltest.lol   (that is, compile the .lol file fulltext.lol)

Error at line: 2. “Library ‘STDIO’ not found” (line sez: CAN HAS STDIO?)

Probably best to go from source. I’ve been putting this off for months: it’s time for an SVN client for Windows. Off to TortoiseSVN so I can download a build.

Using TortoiseSVN checkout http://lolcode-dot-net.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ Revision 35 at the time of posting.

Double-click on the .sln file (Visual Studio solution file) and convert to VS2008.

Ahh, 51 compile errors and 17 warnings. Need NUnit. http://nunit.org/ here I come. Installed, and 0 compile errors, 11 warnings. Forget the warnings. If they were serious, they’d be errors. Coolio. Set my code to generate a Release version.

Again, run cmd

cd C:Program FilesLOLcodelolcbinRelease

lolc test.lol

Success! I have a test.exe

test

Number guessing game. I CAN HAS LOLCODE, compiled from source.