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Recto – A Truly 2D Language
Recto is a 2D programming language that uses nested rectangles as its core syntax, encoding structure and recursion directly in space instead of a linear stream of text. Recto explores new ways to write, parse, and reason about code—and even natural language—spatially.
As Anne-Laure Le Cunff discusses in Thinking in maps, early symbolic systems like star charts in caves or medieval diagrams functioned not just as illustrations, but as visual languages for organizing meaning. ( source) A more conceptual example is Heptapod B, the fictional alien language from Arrival(based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life), which is composed of intricate circular logograms—each representing an entire idea or sentence. Human languages and programming environments evolved from 1D media like speech and text, but visual layout—like punctuation, diagrams, or even number systems such as the Kaktovik numerals —can dramatically improve how we communicate and compute.
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