A few ideas have finally come together. I’ve been looking at Objective-C, the language Apple uses for Mac and iPhone development, and it’s pretty nice. Then over the weekend, I saw Raymond Hettinger’s fabulous PyCon presentation, Easy AI with Python. I wanted to do some AI experimenting of my own, and figured a new language was the way to go.

So I’m starting work on Subjective-C, the first language with semantics specified loosely enough to build systems that mimic human thought. It borrows ideas from lots of sources, of course. Reflection and introspection will play a central role. Python’s duck-typing will be adapted to DWIM-typing. List incomprehesions will allow for more concise coding. Eclipse will be the IDE of choice, since it already has Views and Perspectives of its own.

BTW: this joke has been made before, but not as often as I would have thought.

This idea started when Antonio and I were talking on the L in Chicago, and he said, “Objective-C,” but because of the noise I thought he said, “Subjective-C.” I thought it was funny, but now I wonder, who thought of it? He didn’t, and I didn’t, but we were the only ones there!