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38 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
38 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
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<div class="short">
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nock
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====
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nock is our machine code.
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nock is a homoiconic combinator algebra, not much fancier than SKI
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combinators. The spec fits on a T-shirt and gzips to 340 bytes.
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Think of nock as a kind of functional assembly language. It's not like
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assembly language in that it's directly executed by the hardware. It is
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like assembly language in that:
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- Everything in Urbit executes as nock.
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- You wouldn't want to program directly in nock.
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- Learning to program directly in nock is a great way to start
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understanding urbit from the ground up.
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Just as Unix runs C programs by compiling them to assembler, Urbit runs
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Hoon programs by compiling them to nock. You could try to learn Hoon
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without learning nock. But just as C is a thin wrapper over the physical
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CPU, Hoon is a thin wrapper over the nock virtual machine. It's a tall
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stack made of thin layers, which is much easier to learn a layer at a
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time.
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And unlike most fundamental theories of computing, there's really
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nothing smart or interesting about nock. Of course, in a strictly formal
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sense, all of computing is math. But that doesn't mean it needs to feel
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like math. nock is a simple mechanical device and it's meant to feel
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that way.
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</div>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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<list></list>
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