Request For Comment [RFC] re adding TRAC

Exercism Support
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It’s been suggested to me to consider asking to add the TRAC language to the Exercism stable (yeah, the “TRAC track” with all the associated bad puns).

This is another historical interest language, like SNOBOL4, and is the first language to discuss the concept of “homoiconicity”. It’s also a better intellectual challenge than BrainF*ck because it was invented as a work language rather than as a esoteric.

There are a number of standards: T69, T84 and T2001. I do have access to the T2001 Java version (having used CVS to pull it down from SourceForge) but I’m currently leaning toward T69. I have a C source for T69 called nntrac but I may recode it in something else, like Euphoria.

For those interested, the T69 Description.

So @kytrinyx @iHiD @ErikSchierboom , what do you reckon? I’m not expecting to actually get going on this until maybe late 2025 as I have already started tracks for Harbour, SNOBOL4 and Seed7 and don’t want to get a reputation for starting but never completing. So this is an RFC only at this point.

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I applaud (considered, selective) efforts to bring legacy languages (that is, work languages, not esoteric languages) to new audiences.

TRAC looks to be a suitable candidate. You have my vote.

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Anyone for TECO?

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The day i downloaded TRAC sources I also downloaded TECO sources. I’m happy to collaborate with anyone wanting to get TECO going, provided the admin are up to it.

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At a glance, it looks quite Lisp-y

Any particular reason why you’d want to do that?

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Aside from the usual masochistic tendencies, i have a not quite rational distrust of C (despite both Euphoria and GnuCOBOL transpiling to it.)

If i port the C, Perl or Python versions I’ll have a better idea about what makes TRAC tick.