The Concatative Language XY

http://www.nsl.com/k/xy/xy.txt

Comments

ofalkaedJan 24, 2026, 7:08 PM
The code and details about various versions are available on the homepage which weirdly does not really explain the language.

http://www.nsl.com/k/xy/xy.htm

jasonwatkinspdxJan 24, 2026, 10:58 PM
So this is the blog of Stevan Apter. As you might guess from having a 3 letter vanity domain, he and this website have been around a long long time. It's mostly code golf style stuff posted to the J Software and Concatenative Languages lists. So yeah it'll be terse and obscure outside that community.

The domain name stands for No Stinkin' Loops, a reference to how APL style languages lift iteration to combinator expressions.

ofalkaedJan 24, 2026, 11:15 PM
I did not know any of that, did not even consider if it was a vanity domain but did briefly wonder if nsl was the domain for some small country. I think the homepage does a good job of covering everything we need to know and in someways does a better job, but this posting provides a better overview for a HN submission. I included the homepage since some would probably skim the post or only read as much as they need to get the idea and miss the note at the bottom, someone would have probably posted asking where the code was.

Thanks for the background info.

nitrixJan 25, 2026, 2:32 AM
I’m the Alex mentioned in the acknowledgments, feel free to ask your questions.
ofalkaedJan 25, 2026, 3:22 AM
In what way did you carry the ideas forward? Did you create a language which builds on it or did you just help Stevan develop the ideas of XY? Curious in anything you can contribute.
mncharityJan 25, 2026, 2:30 AM
Including discussion of XY 2.0 and its flatness (all partitions of a sequence of program tokens are semantically equivalent).
gnabgibJan 25, 2026, 2:39 AM
(2004)[0] And yet you submitted it twice in 5 months? weirdly indeed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44880307

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216548

ofalkaedJan 25, 2026, 3:33 AM
It is the same topic but not the same submission, if topics can't be repeated HN will die in short order. Are you suggesting that I am trying to revive my 20 year dead language by posting it twice within 5 months? my posting history should prove that I am not capable of creating such a language.

Not criticizing you, you perform a great service to HN, I am just confused by your post and that might just be a failing of mine. Either way, thanks for all you do.

tobrJan 24, 2026, 9:41 PM
Submitted headline is missing an ’en’.
ofalkaedJan 24, 2026, 11:16 PM
Something about that looked wrong but I just could not quite see it. To late to edit.
mncharityJan 25, 2026, 2:40 AM
"The Concatenative Language XY" discussion (typo in title).

For search.

volemoJan 24, 2026, 8:50 PM
This helped me finally grok continuations!
jaberjaber23Jan 24, 2026, 8:18 PM
interesting mix of k and joy. the queue manipulation primitives like -> and => have no equivalent in joy, lets you do things like call/cc in a few lines
mncharityJan 25, 2026, 2:45 AM
Fwiw, bing/chat identifies the implementation K version as a K2, in a style which might be an easy port to K3.
wvlia5Jan 25, 2026, 2:18 AM
I'm making a new language inspired in XY
zabzonkJan 24, 2026, 11:34 PM
So, basically a less-readable Forth?
wosinedJan 24, 2026, 8:18 PM
Interesting. But looks like assembler and more complicated.