A toy language is a term for a computer programming language that is not considered to fulfill the robustness or completeness requirement of a computer programming language. As such it is not considered a suitable language for creating solid and reliable programs for use in production environments. Which programs to categorize as toy languages is difficult, however. Languages such as Brainfuck and Whitespace are both considered esoteric programming languages. They are Turing complete, which means they are able to compute any computable function, i.e. mathematically they have the same capabilities as languages such as Java, C, C++ and Common Lisp. Logo is another example of a toy language. Its goal was originally to create a math land where children could play with words and sentences. For a long time GCC was shipped with a Toy programming language called Treelang which was essentially C without the advanced concepts such as pointers, arrays and records.
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Famous quotes containing the words toy and/or language:
“As the creative adult needs to toy with ideas, the child, to form his ideas, needs toys—and plenty of leisure and scope to play with them as he likes, and not just the way adults think proper. This is why he must be given this freedom for his play to be successful and truly serve him well.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)