Turing completeness II

Well, as I wrote in the previous post, sed is a Turing complete language. We can use it to implement some simple algorithms, or even a dc interpreter. But what does it really mean? How complex tasks may we achieve using plain sed?What about writin…Well, as I wrote in the previous post, sed is a Turing complete language. We can use it to implement some simple algorithms, or even a dc interpreter. But what does it really mean? How complex tasks may we achieve using plain sed?What about writin…

Well, as I wrote in

the previous post, sed is a Turing complete language. We can use it to implement some simple algorithms, or even a dc interpreter. But what does it really mean? How complex tasks may we achieve using plain sed? What about writing some game? While browsing web, I came across a classic Tetris game written in pure sed. Save this file to something like tetris.sed. Depending on your system, you may need to adjust shebang. For example if you are using PLD Linux, change “#!/usr/bin/sed” to “#!/bin/sed”. chmod a+x it, and run it. Unfortunately main loop is controlled by input lines, so you need to press ENTER few times to allow things to happen. It seems to be the strong limitation of sed. Don’t you think it is awesome? In case you can not get it work (or you just don’t trust any piece of code that people publish on the web), there is an amazing video of tetris.sed in action: Since there is no way to display any graphics in pure sed, we are limited to rogue-like games. Now I’m waiting for ADOM being rewritten in sed!

You May Also Like

4Developers 2010 Review

I've been to 4Developers in 2009 in Cracow, together with Tomasz Przybysz and we had very nice impressions, no wonder then I wanted to signed up for 2010 edition in Poznań as well. Tomasz was sick, but Jakub Kurlenda decided to come with me. This time...I've been to 4Developers in 2009 in Cracow, together with Tomasz Przybysz and we had very nice impressions, no wonder then I wanted to signed up for 2010 edition in Poznań as well. Tomasz was sick, but Jakub Kurlenda decided to come with me. This time...

Context menu or Action buttons ?

Recently I was drawn into one of those UI "religious" disputes that has no easy answers and usually both sides are right. One of our web developers was trying out new web tech (with pretty rich widget library) and started to question himself about some basic usability decisions. The low level problem in this case is usually brought to "which widget should I use ?". I'm not fond of bringing the usability problems to questions: Should I use Tabs over Menu ? Or should I use Context menu instead of buttons panel ? But sometimes if time is crucial factor and other usability levels are by default not addressed at all - better developer that asks those basic questions than developer that do not question himself at all.