Can you help me think of problems for my programming language?

Question

I've created an experimental toy programming language with a (now) working interpreter. It is turing-complete and has a pretty low-level instruction set.

Even if everything takes four to six times more code and time than in PHP, Python or Ruby I still love programming all kinds of things in it.

So I got the "basic" things that are written in many languages working:

• Hello World
• Input -> Output
• Countdowns (not as easy as you think as there are no loops)
• Factorials
• Array emulation
• 99 Bottles of Beer (simple, wrong inflection)
• 99 Bottles of Beer (canonical)

• Collatz conjecture

• Quine (that was a fun one!)

• Brainf*ck interpreter (To proof turing-completeness, made me happy)

So I implemented all of the above examples because:

• They all used many different aspects of the language
• They are pretty interesting
• They don't take hours to write

Now my problem is: I've run out of ideas! I don't find any more examples of what problems I could solve using my language.

• Do you have any programming problems which fit into some of the criteria above for me to work out?

Answer 1

Rather than more things to do in that toy language, I'd think hard about implementing a language that's somewhat more complete and useful. In particular, spend some time thinking about the things you dislike about other languages, and see if you can't improve them.

Answer 2

try implementing various types sorts and searches, using arrays and then pointers.

Sorting Algorithm
Search Algorithm

Answer 3

Something recursive perhaps?

I've got two toy languages of my own. I've done some of what you described. Another thing I did was try to print out the Fibonacci Sequence. One more thing you can do is write a program that checks to see if a number is prime.

Do you have a link to your language? I'd like to check it out!

Answer 4

This could be a good application of the items you find at http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html#more

Answer 5

After you finish with writing a bunch of short applications it might be interesting to write a simple server. A lot of topics come up with servers that would help you identify if your language can address things like UDP/TCP, threading, queues, security, etc.

Answer 6

Check out the RubyQuiz site. Plenty of silly little things you could do to test out your language.

Answer 7

You could add support for arbitrary precision arithmetic by either writing it as a module for your language in your language or as a first class language construct.

Answer 8

Implement a compiler (to any language you know) for your language, in the language itself.

Answer 9

Try things from Project Euler - these puzzles are always good for testing out new languages.

Answer 10

You could consider implementing the tests for the "Shootout".