Ever heard of event-based programming? Nope? Well, here we are.

This is a software design pattern that revolves around controlling and defining state and behaviour. It has a temporal component (the code can rewind to a previous point in time), and is perfectly suited for writing state machines.

I think I could use some peer-review on this idea.

Here's the original spec for a full language: https://gist.github.com/voodooattac...

(which I found to be completely unnecessary, since I just implemented this pattern in plain TypeScript with no extra dependencies. See attached image for how TS code looks like).

The fact that it transcends language barriers if implemented as a library instead of a full language means less complexity in the face of adaptation.

Moving on, I was reviewing the idea again today when I discovered an amazing fact: because this is based on gene expression, and since DNA is recombinant, any state machine code built using this pattern is also recombinant[1]. Meaning you can mix and match condition bodies (as you would mix complete genes) in any program and it would exhibit the functionality you picked or added.

You can literally add behaviour from a program (for example, an NPC) to another by copying and pasting new code from a file to another. Assuming there aren't any conflicts in variable names between the two, and that the variables (for example `state.health` and `state.mood`) mean the same thing to both programs.

If you combine two unrelated programs (a server and a desktop application, for example) then assuming there are no variables clashing, your new program will work as a desktop application and as a server at the same time.

I plan to publish the TypeScript reference implementation/library to npm and GitHub once it has all basic functionality, along with an article describing this and how it all works.

I wish I had a good academic background now, because I think this is worthy of a spec/research paper. Unfortunately, I don't have any connections in academia. (If you're interested in writing a paper about this, please let me know)

Edit: here's the current preliminary code: https://gist.github.com/voodooattac...

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...