About This Project

Wolfscript started out as an independent study class for writing Android™ applications, and it ended up as the topic of my honors thesis for my undergraduate degree at Southwestern University. I always wanted to be able to write applications no matter where I was, so I decided to write a language and an application that made writing code on a phone or tablet as easy as possible.

The language uses short keywords and keeps things extremely simple. As I was designing it, I realized that although it would be difficult to singlehandedly write a language that could approach the power of other languages, the stripped-down and simple nature of Wolfscript could be useful for teaching. Considering the prices of the cheapest Android devices, it might also provide an affordable way to get the ability to program in everyone's hands.

Wolfscript takes an unusual approach in a number of cases. For example, I decided to use a minimal number of data types, sticking with only numbers and arrays of numbers (and sort of methods, and eventually classes, hopefully). Strings are represented as arrays of numbers and only treated as strings when input or output as such. Another example is that all numbers are stored as fractions, allowing for arbitrary precision.

Since Wolfscript is a student project by one person, a lot of features remain incomplete, and there are bugs and performance issues to be fixed. Wolfscript is currently much too slow for my liking, and I desperately want to rewrite some of the interpreter, but I decided it was time to at least get the application out. Feedback is encouraged, and I hope to hear it. Email me at support@balancingcube.com.

If you are curious as to some of my reasoning and want to read about the thought processes that went into this project, feel free to read my honors thesis.