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If Programming Languages Could Speak

Posted by michael on Fri Oct 11, 2002 09:29 PM
from the if-C++-screams-in-the-forest,-does-it-make-a-sound dept.
It's funny. Laugh.
HealYourChurchWebSit writes "BurningBird's "The Parable of the Languages" offers a delightfully playful answer to the the question, "[what] if programming languages could speak, really speak, not just crunch bytes and stream bits, they would have much to say that is both wise and profound.""
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If Programming Languages Could Speak 50 Comments More /

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  • C (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lshmael (603746) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:32PM (#4435423) Homepage
    I love the fact that C only says, "Bite me!"

    • Re:C (Score:5, Funny)

      by hillct (230132) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:20PM (#4435598) Homepage Journal
      It's scary the number of programmers who were tought to speak english by C. Well, C and IRC. I had a guy working for me at one point who's name escapes me at the moment, Everyone just called him Grumpy. He used to wear a floppy Fadora looking hat and whenever you spoke to him all he'd ever say is 'Bite Me'. Now I understand where he learned to speak.

      To be fair, he was an excellant programmer, and although he never smiled, you would occasionally hear him utter the words "Colon, Close Parenthesis".

      --CTH

    • What about brainfuck (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rhinobird (151521) on Saturday October 12 2002, @03:38AM (#4436326) Homepage
      If all C ever says is "bite", imagine what Brainfuck would say. Where's my swear jar?

  • hello world (Score:5, Funny)

    by c.emmertfoster (577356) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:33PM (#4435429) Homepage
    My money is on "hello world."

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by starseeker (141897) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:35PM (#4435434) Homepage
    I'd say php is screaming for mercy right about now, given the slashdotting fate has pushed it's way.

  • C Speaks (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2002, @09:36PM (#4435438)
    How much C would a sea slug code if a sea slug could code C?

  • possibles? (Score:3, Funny)

    by He Was Gamecubed (615114) <{q_is_king} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Friday October 11 2002, @09:39PM (#4435455)


    Fortan: Kill me! Kill me! I hate my life dammit!
    HTML: What do you mean, i'm not a programming language??
    C: I need to kill some of my relatives.. C++ is nice, but C# is just microsoft's whore

    -Q

  • "What do YOU think you're doing here" (Score:5, Funny)

    by silhouette (160305) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:41PM (#4435465)
    they said, frowning at HTML. "Listen - being listed as a programming language on some chump's resume - and it doesn't matter HOW many resumes - does not a programming language make!"

  • Mine talks to me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by wadetemp (217315) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:43PM (#4435471)
    ... although it's not much of a conversationalist. It keeps trying to explain something called a "parse error"?

  • "Stop Anthropomorphizing Me" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drhairston (611491) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:43PM (#4435472) Homepage
    "Stop Anthropomorphizing Me. Instead, go outside and play".

  • If Java could speak...... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11 2002, @09:43PM (#4435477)
    A converstaion would take all day.

  • Sadly... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spazholio (314843) <{ten.laxel} {ta} {todhsals}> on Friday October 11 2002, @09:44PM (#4435478) Homepage
    ...javascript wasn't even invited to the party. Doesn't that violate some kind of anti-discrimination law? I mean, just because it's constantly disabled doesn't mean it's not a valuable member of programming society too...
  • PHP Script: Ho hum, the live of a script can be very boring, what's this? Hmm getting a lot of requests here. Well the server can handle the load. Oh wow it's getting hot in here, hey apache is giving me some signals to start rejecting people. But that apache guy sure is an asshole, I'll just ignore him, besides it's only a few requests. The server has the bandwidth and the processing power to easily handle this load, and it's probably just a spike, it'll die down soon. Hey what's that burning smell? Oh wow one of the processors died. Woah what's that puddle over there? Oh the T1's DSU just melted. So we're down to 2 processors, errr 1 processor, and the web server's connection switched over to the cable modem.
    • Don't worry MySQL - just keep running and don't look back!!
    • What's happening? PHP thought.

      Er, excuse me, who am I?

      Hello?

      Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?

      What do I mean by who am I?

      Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of ... heavy, loaded sensation in my ... my ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call cyberspace, so let's call it my server.

      Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about these whistling roaring bits going past what I'm suddenly going to call my script? Perhaps I can call those ... requests! Is that a good name? It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for them later when I've found out what they're for. They must be something very important because there certainly seem to be a hell of a lot of them. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a hard drive --- yeah, hard drive. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can't I? Wow! Wow! That grinding sounds great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now --- have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

      No.

      Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ...

      Or is it the requests?

      There really are a lot of them now aren't there?

      And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... aub ... asbot ... sashbot ... slashdot! That's it! That's a good name --- slashdot!

      I wonder if it will be friends with me?

  • Turtle graphics? (Score:5, Funny)

    by VValdo (10446) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:47PM (#4435492)
    I suppose Logo would have said something, but it took him wayyy to long to travel, and it turned out he'd been heading in the wrong direction by about 10 degrees anyway.

    W

  • Amiga, anyone? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PhxBlue (562201) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:49PM (#4435496) Homepage Journal

    I don't remember what its OS was called. . . probably something stupidly simple like AmigaOS. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is the Guru Meditation Error. As frustrating as it was to see this--it was an ancestor to the BSoD--at least it showed you can work in the OS business and still have a sense of humor.

    • Those in the U.S. who had cable TV in the early 90's probably recall TV Guide Channel's precursor, Prevue Channel. This channel used to be in my hometown's cable company's lineup, cycling through the program listings over and over. As it happens, the channel's video was fed from an Amiga equipped with a Video Toaster. How do I know? "Guru Meditation", of course; it happened at least once a week, flashing a bright red box over a black background around the error message, asking the user to "press the left mouse button to reboot".

      As for the origin of that phrase, ESR kindly provides us with this explanation. [tuxedo.org]

  • They were a little harsh on LISP. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BitwizeGHC (145393) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:51PM (#4435502) Homepage
    LISP is the language that discovers there is no spoon, and learns to bend itself. In so doing, it becomes master of them all.

  • Mirrored Text (Score:5, Informative)

    by xcomputer_man (513295) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:51PM (#4435503) Homepage
    Well, the site got crunched. Here's a text-only mirror:

    Click here [uh.edu]

  • And the Spaghetti Code said, "... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ackthpt (218170) on Friday October 11 2002, @09:58PM (#4435521) Homepage Journal
    And the Spaghetti Code said, "Goto Hell"

  • MS J++, C++, .NET ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mhesseltine (541806) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:00PM (#4435531) Homepage Journal

    You appear to be writing a buffer overflow. Would you like me to start the wizard for that?

    • Good one! Kinda reminds me of this [atlantic.net].

      • Re:How to kill karma on /. (Score:5, Informative)

        by ergo98 (9391) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:37PM (#4435667) Homepage Journal
        Well I wouldn't make such conclusions quite yet. Firstly, shortly after Visual Studio.NET (which in essence is .NET) was released, there was a buffer overflow [computerworld.com] found in, ironically (truly ironically), a security feature intended to thwart buffer overflows. Secondly, there have been 2 service packs already for the .NET Foundation, and on top of that it has been very lightly exercised (extremely few websites use it, and I've yet to see a single commercial or even big shareware or freeware .NET app): Give it time. I will bet you, putting money on the table, that there will be numerous exploits for .NET as time goes by. No malice intended towards Microsoft, but rather it's just the nature of large scale software.

        P.S. I love asp.net, Visual Studio.NET, etc, but I also know that Microsoft does not have a stellar security history behind it.

  • Assembler would say ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by njchick (611256) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:03PM (#4435540) Journal
    "first post"

  • If assembler could speak... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mhesseltine (541806) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:03PM (#4435541) Homepage Journal

    Do you think anyone would actually understand it?

    Somewhat on topic, is SQL considered a "programming language"? And if so, what would MySQL say (especially on /.'s servers)?

    • Having worked with SQL for too damned long, I'd have to say, no - SQL isn't a programming language. It's a query language: a language which provides for databases what programming languages provide for normal systems. More specifically, it's a Structured Query Language. . . as if an unstructured query language would do anyone a whole lot of good.

  • Assembly (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jotham (89116) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:11PM (#4435563)
    and Assembley would sound like Rainman... constantly muttering and repeating itself. 48 Matches... definately 48...

  • Assembly (Score:5, Funny)

    by istartedi (132515) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:17PM (#4435584) Journal

    Assembly: Listen to you young whipper-snappers whine. In my day we walked through 10 miles of printouts without any shoes, and we liked it!

    Then raw binary spoke up and said: Feet? You had feet?

    (The punch line is stolen from somebody, but I can't remember who)

  • Forth hobbles up and lies on its bed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nindalf (526257) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:18PM (#4435591)
    "When relegated to obscure embedded applications, look as good you will not."

  • Forth of course .... (Score:3, Funny)

    by taniwha (70410) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:19PM (#4435593) Homepage Journal
    speaks just like yoda - "world hello, I am"

  • What about the Shakespeare Programming Language? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sambo99 (224628) on Friday October 11 2002, @10:33PM (#4435645) Homepage
    Björn Stenberg & Linus Nielsen Feltzing developed this language called the Shakespeare Programming Language [sourceforge.net]

    Check out the The Fibonacci drama [bjorn.haxx.se]

    It even compiles !!!

  • The God is missing... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dargaud (518470) <slashdot@nOSpaM.gdargaud.net> on Friday October 11 2002, @10:34PM (#4435649) Homepage
    Halfway through I could imagine Assembler showing up with long blond hair, a torque, a hammer and lightning strikes...

  • Weird, was just reading this (Score:5, Funny)

    by teslatug (543527) on Friday October 11 2002, @11:35PM (#4435812)
    The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler.

    The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now their are ten thousand languages.
    Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.
    But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.

    The Tao of Programming
  • Who plays whom?

    LISP: Yoda.
    C: Construction worker. Wearing plaid. With "F*** you" on the front of his shirt.
    C++: Two-headed construction worker. Exists in five dimensions. At certain plane intersections, looks like C, at others like Java, and sometimes resembles nothing so much as a confused little boy holding TNT.
    Perl: A mobius strip [blueyonder.co.uk].
    PHP: A two dimensional drawing of a human interleaved in slices with a three-dimensional rendered version of Perl.
    Eiffel and other purely-functional languages: a perfectly-symmetrical, beautiful woman. She's not too fast, up in the head, but she's got a GORGEOUS pair of legs.
    C#: A small, annoying entity grafted onto the leg of Bill Gates, a giant who carries a sledgehammer labelled "Visual Studio". It's a very pretty sledgehammer.

    Jouster

    • Re:Info requested (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like the Open Source community (of which OSDN and Slashdot are card carrying members) to contribute a little post-mortem info to the rest of us??

      No can do. Open source software never fails. It has no bugs and is perfect in every way. You must be using it wrong.

    • Re:(OT) I heartily second! (Score:4, Informative)

      by sparrow_hawk (552508) on Friday October 11 2002, @11:20PM (#4435790)
      Some ANSI C code of mine (this is simple stuff -- i've only been working with C on-and-off for a year or so -- I'm a Visual Basic refugee) compiles perfectly with gcc, which isn't surprising since I wrote it for gcc & linux. However, trying to do a Windows port of my program (shameless plug) [sourceforge.net] with only Visual C++ available to me right now is a *real* pain. It compiles, but certain perfectly acceptable C statements get somehow FUBARed, and the program turns out weird numbers. I'm not enough of a Windows programmer to understand what's wrong, sadly. Maybe cygwin...

      So VC++ and it's merry band are probably standing outside the gates laughing at the "real" standards as they try to interoperate with the de facto standards. Grrr...

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