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by bunderbunder 587 days ago
This is a program that executes and produces an output. It also has state - every step of executing that DSL is creating and manipulating a piece of state that builds up a declarative description of what the final output should look like.

The other thing you list, input, is optional. I write programs that don't take any input all the time. Monte Carlo simulation, for example. The entire demoscene is largely devoted to creating incredibly sophisticated programs that don't take any input. Postscript is a full, Turing-complete language whose primary purpose is to create programs that generally don't take any input

1 comments

Programs that produce diagrams should be (and are) written in a programming language. They accept input, execute, and produce output. Diagrams themselves do not execute and have state (unless they are interactive[0]). There's a difference.

[0] https://app.ilograph.com

Be aware the poster has a history of being very active on posts related to diagramming tools to discourage his competitors' solutions and/or promote his own tool without disclosing affiliation.