Your First Program in Plain English¶

New to coding? EPL is a programming language where every keyword is an ordinary English word. This tutorial takes you from zero to writing real programs — loops, conditions, functions — without learning a single cryptic symbol.

No install needed to follow along: open the EPL Playground and type as you read. To run it locally: pip install eplang.

Hello, world¶

Say "Hello, world!"

Say prints text. Run it and you'll see:

Hello, world!

That's a complete program. Compare it to what most languages make you write for the same thing — no print(), no System.out.println, no semicolons.

Variables¶

A variable is a labelled box that holds a value:

name = "Ada"
age = 36

Say "Hello, " + name

Hello, Ada

The + joins pieces of text together. Numbers work as you'd expect:

price = 40
tax = 8
Say "Total: " + (price + tax)

Total: 48

Making decisions¶

Programs choose what to do using If:

age = 20

If age is greater than 18 then
    Say "You can vote"
Otherwise
    Say "Too young to vote"
End

You can vote

Read it aloud — it's a sentence. is greater than, is less than, and is equal to are the comparisons, spelled the way you'd say them.

Repeating things¶

To do something several times, use a loop:

Repeat 3 times
    Say "Practice makes perfect"
End

To count through a range:

For i from 1 to 5
    Say "Step " + i
End

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5

Working with lists¶

A list holds many values in order:

scores = [95, 87, 92]

total = 0
For Each s in scores
    total = total + s
End

Say "Total: " + total
Say "Average: " + (total / length(scores))

Total: 274
Average: 91.33333333333333

For Each ... in walks through every item. length(...) tells you how many there are.

FizzBuzz — the classic first challenge¶

This is the program every new programmer writes: print numbers 1 to 15, but say "Fizz" for multiples of 3, "Buzz" for multiples of 5, and "FizzBuzz" for both. % gives the remainder after division, so a remainder of 0 means "divides evenly."

For i from 1 to 15
    If i % 15 is equal to 0 then
        Say "FizzBuzz"
    Otherwise if i % 3 is equal to 0 then
        Say "Fizz"
    Otherwise if i % 5 is equal to 0 then
        Say "Buzz"
    Otherwise
        Say i
    End
End

1
2
Fizz
4
Buzz
Fizz
7
8
Fizz
Buzz
11
Fizz
13
14
FizzBuzz

You just wrote a program that stumps a lot of interview candidates — and you can read every line of it.

Functions — naming a piece of work¶

A function bundles steps under a name so you can reuse them:

Function double takes n
    Return n * 2
End

Say double(21)

Functions can call themselves, which is how you express things like the Fibonacci sequence:

Function fibonacci takes n
    If n is less than 2 then
        Return n
    End
    Return fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2)
End

Say fibonacci(10)

Where to go next¶

You now know variables, conditions, loops, lists, and functions — the core of every programming language, in plain English.

If EPL made programming click for you, star it on GitHub — it helps other beginners find it.