[occultist_throw]

> You don't have to memorize the new names they've come up with for most of the ASCII punctuation characters, like "gal", "gar", and "hax" for "<", ">", and "#", "but it helps". A normal engineer's reaction to a system that tells it that it will help to remember a new name for the pound sign is to ask "Why? What fresh horror lurks in the deeper meaning of your new name for the percent sign? And why won't you tell me before I commit to this system?"

Speaking of that.. I looked again at the reference documentation and the "hello world" (Fizzbuzz). It feels like I'm playing a game of Magic the Gathering on another world, with different physics and vocalizations I cannot do.

https://urbit.org/docs/hoon/reference/

     {$book p/(list {{aura @} moss})}: mold which recognizes a union tagged by head atom.
     {$lamb p/moss q/moss}: mold which normalizes to an example gate.
     {$port p/moss q/seed}: form an iron gate.
     {$gill p/moss q/seed}: form a gill, a wet one-armed core with sample.
     {$gasp p/seed q/seed}: form a gate with burnt sample.

Uhm.. What? I know I'm reading words. But part of it makes me feel like Im also in Game of Thrones. Iron Gate, wet one-armed core, and a burnt sample?

And their demo (Fizzbuzz) is just as illegible. https://urbit.org/docs/hoon/demo/ . I get programming. I know there's concepts in different langs that need understood. But one thing I know is that the demo should be easy to dip your toes in.

And it starts. "Tape" is really a string. "Home Desk" -Im guessing its the urbit home directory for your user? Urbit Pier? No bloody clue. But Im supposed to copy the file (oh wait, is file even used, or maybe its joobpflep?) to it. But at least the "Urbit Dojo" is the shell.

[Fang_]

The reference docs honestly aren't the best place to start when learning Hoon, as backwards as that may sound. I've found the tutorial docs[0] to be much more helpful when first exploring Urbit, and there's a fair amount of good community documentation listed on the docs page[1] as well.

[0]: https://urbit.org/docs/arvo/

[1]: https://urbit.org/docs/