Howdy friend 👋

This is a multi part post about the programming language I’ve been working on in my free time called Errand (lang). Part 1 - Why another language?: Why I thought there was a need for a new language and what it aims to do Part 2: Design: How this language will try to solve these problems Part 3: Progress & Roadmap: What’s been written so far, and what’s next

Intro Whenever I see new programming languages, the #1 question I see people ask, and one I ask myself, is why? What problems does this language solve that aren’t solved by an existing language? Why is this language the solution to those problems? Why can’t this be added to an existing language or as a library? The most common answer to this is simply that they wanted to learn about what it takes to make a programming language. And honestly I also fall into this bucket. I had written a tiny parser in College, and had a general understanding of how interpreters and compilers worked but wanted to get my hands dirty trying to write a real language 1. ...

Introduction I recently read this1 tweet, which referenced the LLaDa paper (Large Language Diffusion Models). And with Inception’s recent announcement of their Mercury models, I’ve been thinking a lot about Diffusion architectures for large language models, and I’m really excited about them. I harbor very similar sentiments that diffusion feels far more analogous to how humans think compared to the transformer-based token autoregressive models (ARMs) that currently dominate the field. Instead of simply predicting what the next token should be, us humans ideate some concept as a whole and then put it into words (or some other medium). Using a diffusion model is much closer to this as it effectively generates all the tokens together in parallel instead of one at a time. ...

The key to 3D printed construction is a materials problem. Standard desktop plastic 3D printing is so powerful because you can create nearly any shape in a single go, with only small temporary supports where necessary. It has become a ubiquitous technology that is used in countless industries nowadays from making toys to car parts and rockets. And as such, people are now also trying to use it for the $10 Trillion housing market which has been plagued with high prices for many years now. There are many reasons for the price of houses and apartment buildings, but certainly if they were both cheaper and faster to build it would help alleviate several of the major issues. Which is exactly what 3D printed construction aims to accomplish. ...

Government provides small insurance policies constantly. Once such example is walk signs. The key however is that you don’t pay with money, you pay with time! Every time you want to cross an intersection and you don’t see any cars coming, but the walk sign still has that orange hand telling you to stop, you have two options: Ignore the sign and cross anyways Wait until the sign says you can cross By paying with your time and waiting for the sign to change, the government insures that you have certain rights if a car comes blazing through the red light which you don’t have otherwise. (i.e. right to sue for compensation) ...