SIsibeshk96·Aug 17, 2022Submission
Show HN: Flatland – Toy environment for program synthesis
4 points · Open discussionmayalabsio
flatland
Python2022–2022
mayalabsio / flatland
flatland
Flatland turtle toy environment for program synthesis experiments.
2Distinct people
2Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Flatland turtle toy environment for program synthesis experiments.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by week2 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-02-08 08:45:41 UTC to 2022-08-17 17:12:29 UTC. Weeks start Monday, UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 7 | 2022-02-07 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-14 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Feb 14 | 2022-02-14 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-21 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 21 | 2022-02-21 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-28 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 28 | 2022-02-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-07 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 7 | 2022-03-07 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-14 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 14 | 2022-03-14 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-21 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 21 | 2022-03-21 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-28 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 28 | 2022-03-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-04 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 4 | 2022-04-04 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-11 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 11 | 2022-04-11 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-18 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 18 | 2022-04-18 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-25 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 25 | 2022-04-25 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-02 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2 | 2022-05-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-09 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 9 | 2022-05-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 16 | 2022-05-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-23 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 23 | 2022-05-23 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-30 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 30 | 2022-05-30 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-06 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 6 | 2022-06-06 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-13 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 13 | 2022-06-13 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-20 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 20 | 2022-06-20 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-27 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 27 | 2022-06-27 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-04 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 4 | 2022-07-04 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-11 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 11 | 2022-07-11 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-18 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 18 | 2022-07-18 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-25 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 25 | 2022-07-25 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 1 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-08 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 8 | 2022-08-08 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-15 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 15 | 2022-08-15 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-22 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
2 sources> I would actually be more impressed if it understood enough about programs to be able to mimic higher-level structure without just memorizing text.
Agreed.
> Why do you think Python isn't good for comparing program structure?
From recent experience I prefer control flow analysis, or something that results in a graph structure. As you said, that's harder with dynamic languages. I also think some Python features (english-like syntax, f-strings, division converts int to float, whitespace indentation, loops vs generator expressions) make structural comparisons messy, but that may just be bias.
The ideal language would be one with minimal syntax, where we can target a decent range of programs, and obtain as much info as possible about program structure without actually running the program. I've come across LISP-without-macros in Dreamcoder (h
Read the rest
ttps://arxiv.org/abs/2006.08381), BF++ (https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09571), and a couple of others which I can't remember right now. I think the APL family (APL/J/K) would interesting because fewer characters to generate, but each character has a lot of meaning.
Right now I'm looking at flow-based programming (FBP) for this: In FBP the control flow is explicit - the program code describes a directed acyclic graph (DAG), so comparing program structure becomes straightforward (subgraph isomorphism with some heuristics). I'm writing a toy FBP language that draws images (https://github.com/mayahq/flatland), with which I aim to test what these models understand.