When I was a young Computer Science student studying how languages are built one of the concepts, which overlapped with my study of Linguistics, was that of Generative Grammars.
Generative Grammars are built of nesting structures: paragraphs break down into sentences, which in turn are built of phrases, and phrases of words. We can create rules that talk about how these phrases are constructed, and by putting words in the right slots, we can construct grammatically correct text.
That's the principle behind the Kant Generator.
It generates texts using three different grammars, using three different sets of vocabulary: text in the style of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Thank You notes, and Excuses.
Working on the project become an opportunity to learn constraints, create a responsive design, and create fun animations that echo the spirit of the text.
This work is based on an older app built by Mark Pilgrim, which ran on 68K Macs, this version runs on iOS devices (and Macs, thanks to Catalyst, Apple's framework for running iOS apps on Mac)
Kant Generator is available in the Apple App Store.
Kant Generator