Inspired by a tweet, I decided to write an Old English name generator in Madlang. This would help my indecision (picking a favorite color is hard!), and it would unearth some limitations of Madlang.
Creating a feminine name generator was quite simple:
:define prefix
1.0 "Ead"
1.0 "Wulf"
1.0 "Ælf"
1.0 "Æthel"
1.0 "Cyne"
1.0 "Seax"
1.0 "Byrht"
1.0 "Leof"
:define feminine
1.0 "flæd"
1.0 "burh"
1.0 "wynn"
1.0 "gifu"
1.0 "thryth"
1.0 "gyth"
1.0 "waru"
1.0 "swith"
1.0 "lufu"
1.0 "hild"
1.0 "run"
:return
1.0 prefix feminine
This returned results as we would like:
Ælfgyth
Eadwaru
Wulfwynn
Eadwynn
Leofburh
...
As we can see, simple tasks are indeed simple in Madlang. There are some limitations however; I wanted to be able to include a translation alongside, and Madlang's nonexistent type system makes this impossible. Since any solution would be rather substantial changes to the language, I don't think either will come to pass anytime soon, but future emendations to the language should be made with the goal of allowing such agreement.
