Waduzitdo

A Complete Programming Environment on a Single Web Page in Less Than 8k
Terminal Screen

What is it about?

'WADUZITDO: How To Write a Language in 256 Words or Less' was the title of an article from BYTE magazine, September 1978 issue (pp. 166-175), by Larry Kheriarty, describing a very minimalistic language to show off 'what a computer can do', intended to catch attention from even a complete computer illiterate.

WADUZITDO is a rough PILOT descendant, following a very simple [<Modifier>*] <Operation> ":" <Data> structure, where every line is a single instruction to the computer.

This implementation is rather straight forward, modelled after the 6800 Assembly language version as authoritative source, thus honoring all embedded quirks

 
 X
Program Editor

How does it do what it does?

Every line is an operation made up from the following.
Operations:
T:text Display text on the terminal.
A: Accept (input) one character from the terminal keyboard.
M:x Match (compare) x to last input character and set match flag to Y if equal, set to N if not equal.
J:n If n=0 jump to last accept.
If n=1 thru 9 jump to nth program marker forward from the J.
S: Stop program execution.
Modifiers: (Preceding Operations)
Y Execute operation only if match flag is 'Y'.
N Execute operation only if match flag is 'N'.
* Serves as a jump destination.