About the person what wrote it...

The Research Machines 380Z

Inhale. My name is Sean Charles and I learned to code BASIC at the age of 11 and I have been stuck ever since wondering if all I am and all I see around me is just one huge massive mind-blowing computation. You are talking to someone that believes that every breath he takes is exchanging information with the Universe, and that ultimately, he is not at all separate from the Universe but part of it. Exhale.

FELT → λε∫τ

Ever since I learnt CESIL (a primitive assembler language that was executed on a cardboard CPU in school, CESIL stood for 'computer education in schools instructional language), ever since then, I have been fascinated by just how many different computer languages there are. Each one designed by smarter dudes than I'll ever be, designed by clever people for clever ends or personal ends. But so many, and they keep on coming. People and languages. So many repetitions of what one day must surely be just facets of the same thing.

I "found" LISP when I was about seventeen years old and it struck a chord with me that has resonated throughout what you might laughingly call my "career". I use that word loosely. I've never really sat well with the nine-to-five but that's another story completely.

Ever since LISP, I've always wanted to write a computer language but growing from 17 to 47, in those thirty years, despite real cool stuff along the way, I still FELT the need to return to LISP and bring the rest of the world with me because to me, LISP is magic in the way it captures the true spirit of programming. LISP is a language but it isn't, all the inspiration I needed for FELT in bucket loads.

FELT is my own small, humble and insignificant effort to help me try to pin down what is the magic that we weave and invoke every time we design, code and execute a computer program. If that sounds freaky, then don't blame me... one of the coolest things I ever watched was the Sussman/Steele SICP video lectures, specifically the one where he calls his students wizards and magicians!

What I would hope for is that as people "learn" FELT they get curious and go and try LISP instead and never look back. No point "blub"-ing about all those lost years. ;)

SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Classic viewing IMHO. Check out these venerable Wikipedia links for more information:

If FELT is anything it is my way to be able to express a solution to a problem once and then be able to re-use it without wasting my time learning another language, and another and another. By expressing minimal knowledge about a language in the 'coder class' the FELT system can generate code for any language, with reason that is allowing for the fact that it is fundamentally untyped and not a language.

Final thought

This is from the README.txt file and pretty much sums it up for me, I could go on for hours, years even but it's serve no real purpose other than to confuse somebody sooner or later, probably me. Here then is my parting summation of FELT...

In fact, the way that I like to think of FELT is like an amiable drunk staggering through a minefield guided only by the hands of the Gods looking down. He manages to avoid the bad bits and still gets home in one piece.

Thanks for reading.