Introduction
Truth is a method for classifying conscious understanding. It does so by providing the human a computationally-aware method of indicating what things are ("is-a" relationships), and what they have ("has-a" relationships). Through these declarations of existence, a body of information is gradually formed that is guaranteed to be devoid of inaccuracies and falsehoods.
Truth was not constructed by fiat. It's characteristics are not a mere convenient recipe designed to address some transient need. Rather, it's a design that was uncovered through ontological and epistemological reasoning, and refined through intense scrutiny. Because of this, many of the rules can be intuited without reading any documentation, and instead by simply walking through the line of reasoning intellectually.
In Truth, there is no inherent distinction between structure and data, nor is there a concept of a binary class/instance relationship. Everything is an abstract Type. Constraints are introduced by establishing is-a relationships between types.
Truth is not a system for expressing computation. Truth is immutable, stateless, unconditional and timeless. Therefore, writing Truth is not to be considered an act of programming.
Language Overview
In the beginning, Truth is formless and empty. There exists absolutely nothing–no strings, numbers, or data types of any kind. There are no keywords or built-in framework. The main construct is the :, called the Joint, which loosely translates to "is a kind of":
Plant
Tree : Plant
Separate lines in Truth are like sentences, each being a separate statement of existence. And so in English, the above Truth translates to "There exists what we call Plant. There also exists what we call Tree, which is a kind of Plant".
Has-a relationships are expressed through indentation. The indentation pattern is infinitely recursive, allowing statements to be nested as many levels as necessary.
Number
Plant
Tree : Plant
Height : Number
Minimum : Number
Maximum : Number
Patterns & Aliases
In Truth, there are Patterns, which are regular expressions that essentially say "when a term to the right of a joint is encountered that conforms to this pattern, make it a ...". As stated above, Truth does not have any built-in data types. They must be established by the user, with patterns being one of the core mechanisms by which this is done. Lines that start with a / are interpreted as Patterns:
Decimal
/\d+\.\d+ : Decimal
Pi : 3.1415926
Phi : 1.6180339
This Truth establishes a rule that any term composed from 1 or more digits, followed by a dot, followed by 1 or more digits is assumed to be a Decimal. And so we have two constants declared, Pi and Phi, which are inferred as Decimals.
Inheritance
Single and multiple inheritance are foundational constructs of cognition, and so they exist in Truth. The Truth compiler accepts any inheritance hierarchy forming an arbitrarily complex directed acyclic graph. Below, we demonstrate a classic diamond-shaped inheritance structure:
String
Number
Language
Employee
Name : String
Engineer : Employee
Specialization : Language
Salesman : Employee
Commission Rate : Number
Sales Engineer : Engineer, Salesman
From this Truth, the compiler would be able to infer that Sales Engineer has a Name, a Specialization and a Commission Rate, all without these being declared explicitly.
Faults
There are many ways by which falsehoods may contaminate Truth. Fortunately, the Truth compiler is able to detect these and call them out. One such falsehood is described below, specifically on the last line:
Language
Systems Language : Language
C++, Rust : Systems Language
Query Language : Language
SQL, GraphQL : Query Language
Engineer
Specialization : Language
Systems Engineer : Engineer
Specialization : Systems Language
Robert : Systems Engineer
Specialization : Rust
Joseph : Systems Engineer
Specialization : SQL
An Engineer has a Specialization, which is a Language. A Systems Engineer is defined as a kind of engineer whose specialization is more specifically a Systems Language. Joseph purports to be a Systems Engineer, however, his specialization is SQL, which is a Query Language, and hence the falsehood.
Project Status
- The Truth compiler is being actively developed by a real company with enterprise customers and a sound business model. It's being used to tackle some of the most challenging data complexity problems.
Installing
npm install truth-compiler --save
Longevity
Truth is being actively developed by a real company with enterprise customers and a sound business model. It's being used to tackle some of the most challenging data complexity problems.