Short Summary
The picture above is a page from one of Einstein's notebooks. Note that when this genius wanted to get his thoughts down on paper, he used three different means: text, formulas, and graphics. Almost all scholarly papers do the same thing, as do math books, the Wikipedia, etc. So our thought is, let's program in the same way: a natural language framework with formulas and graphics where they're needed.
The trick, of course is with the natural language part. Programming languages that process formula-like statements are a dime a dozen. And what-you-see-is-what-you-get graphics programs are everywhere as well. So we decided to fill in the gap. In fact, we decided to see exactly how far a programmer could get using nothing but English (knowing we could easily put in the formulas and graphics later).
The result of our little proof-of-concept experiment is an integrated Plain English development system with a spartan desktop interface, a simplified file manager, an elegant text editor, a handy hexadecimal dumper, a native-code-generating compiler, and a wysiwyg page editor that we used to produce the documentation -- written entirely in Plain English sentences. You can read the documentation here:
www.osmosian.com/instructions.pdf
And you can get the whole shebang for Windows, including the source code, here:
www.osmosian.com/cal-3040.zip
Just download and unzip it. Less than a megabyte. No installation necessary. Start with the instructions.pdf mentioned above and before you go ten pages you won't just be saying, "Hello, World!" -- you'll be recompiling the entire system in itself in less than three seconds on a bottom-of-the-line computer from Walmart.
What We Need & What You Get
So the hard part is done and it works. But it's only a prototype, and there are a lot of improvements we'd still like to make in our natural language processing. And we need to integrate the formula and graphic parts as well. Not to mention make the thing run on something other than just Windows. And thoroughly test it. Document it. Package it up and make sure it's ready for prime time. But we're out of money and need your help.
Any contributor can become one of our beta-testers whose input and constructive criticism will help to shape the final product. Depending on the amount you contribute, you will also get our Hybrid Programming T-Shirt and the complete Hybrid Programming System with a lifetime of free upgrades.
The Impact
Hybrid Programming may very well change programming as we know it because, for the first time, scientists, engineers, programmers and many others will be able to simply write down what they're thinking, in the way that's most natural -- text, formulas, and graphics -- and their computers will understand.
Risks & Challenges
This is a low-risk project. As mentioned above, the hard part is done and it works. What's left is well-understood and has been done many times by ourselves and others. But it is a lot of work, especially when the goal is to make it run on as many devices as possible. Hence the big budget.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you can't contribute financially, you can still help by discussing the idea on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, etc. Please do. And thank you.
