this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Honestly this could be an improvement compared to what is currently in use by the current french tax collection agency.
The DGFiP uses an up until recently closed-source custom language called "M", which does not have the friendliest/most readable syntax, and that the guys at INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, the same lab that seems to have spat out CatalaLang) had to reverse engineer a modern compiler when open sourcing the tax calculation software was newly mandated.
Witness this horrid glory, sadly only in French: chap-1.m
Could also be intended for other horrid COBOL output cases:
Trying to approach and make visible the relationship with the laws as written, so that it can potentially be reviewed by non domain-experts doesn't appear to me to be the worst possible goal out there. (They seem to be trying interleaved markdown format), the bigger/broader claims in the about/readme sections might just be required bells and whistles for proper grant funding/thesis presentation.
that makes a lot of sense, and INRIA (whose work I’ve used before, way back when I was a research assistant) has my sympathies for the situation they’re correcting for
though the engineering bones in my body are still aching from how bad the new language seems from the outside