Esoteric Programming Languages 259
led_belly writes: "I came across this interesting page from the #alt.linux IRC chat room topic (irc.keystreams.com). It is an interesting read for all those who have ever been baffled by why/how some people do things. The Yahoo! Webring listing of similar topics is here."
My head hurts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My head hurts (Score:5, Informative)
55+
put 5 on the stack twice, add the numbers on the stack together, leaving 10, or a newline in ascii.
".dlrow
put "Hello, world." on the stack in reverse, this is so we can pop it off in the proper order.
>:#,_@
very nice code to print out everything on the stack. '>' sets the IP velocity to "east", ':' duplicates the last item on the stack. '_' pops an item off the stack and tests it, if true, set IP to west, if false set it to east. The # skips the next instruction, and the comma prints the character off. So you're testing and printing until there's nothing left on the stack. The '@', finally, exits, which is executed when there's nothing left on the stack.
Makes sense?
Re:My head hurts (Score:2)
Of course string order can be arbitrary as long as the pattern is parsable by the language.
Re:My head hurts (Score:1)
"H","e","l","l","o",","," ","w","o","r","l","d",".",55+,@
but that would be nasty. I'd sooner approach from the east, and read it backwards, but read right-to-left instead... that's a lot simpler.
Re:My head hurts (Score:2, Informative)
If you're really interested, you might look at www.catseye.mb.ca, which is Chris Pressey's (creator of befunge) website.
Re:My head hurts (Score:2, Funny)
> the following is the smallest 'Hello, World' program:
> 55+".dlrow
Ah! So the notorious seineewerasreenigneepacsteN gig was just some source accidentally shipped with the executable, rather than an attempt at obfuscation.
I think perl is shorter (Score:3, Funny)
55+".dlrow
print"Hello, world.\n"
Note that the space after print and final semicolon are optional in perl.
-Ted
Re:I think perl is shorter (Score:1)
Anyhow, Befunge (93) programs are executed on a torus, so are 2D.
Re:I think perl is shorter (Score:2, Funny)
?"Hello World."
Re:My head hurts (Score:2)
"Your comment looks too much like ascii art."
Not a bad description of BrainF*** really.... Anyway check it out on this nice little page: http://www.roesler-ac.de/wolfram/hello.htm
Re:My head hurts (Score:2, Informative)
r:#,_q#:"Hello world!"+55
(wrote it myself
-xmath
Slashcode :) (Score:2, Funny)
INTERCAL (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, it appears very inefficint - A search for prime numbers less than 65535 took 17 hours while C can handle that in a about half a second.
Re:INTERCAL (Score:5, Informative)
They don't bother, but the language isn't static. There is a multi-threading extension for example. Typical of Intercal it is unlike all other threading packages I know of. It doesn't share data, only the code, all messages must be passed by altering the code (disabling and enabling blocks). Trintercal is base-3, there is also a base-N variant (the base-3 one shares some ops with the Klingon programming language...)
I thought *I* had it bad enough... (Score:2)
What's wrong with Haskell? (Score:2)
Care to elaborate on what you think is wrong with it?
Re:What's wrong with Haskell? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean really, in Haskell, "factorial" looks like this:
fact 0 = 1
fact n = n * fact (n - 1)
Write that, and "fact 20" works just fine:
Examples> fact 20
2432902008176640000
Examples>
However, implementing Haskell (or Self) on a von Neumann architecture is non-trivial. Implementing an efficient compiler or interpreter is tres difficil. People get Ph. D. dissertations for that sort of thing. For someone deeply used to C, Haskell and Self are perverse.
To wit:
- In Haskell, nothing changes. Ever. State change is handled by creating a new state from the old one. Semantically clean, but about as far from C as you can get.
- In Self, anything can change at any time. Yes, Virginia, you can redefine "if-then" whenever you feel like it. Change the inheritance hierarchy? No problem! Whoops! I made a cycle in the inheritance hierarchy! No problem! (yes, A can inherit from B and B can inherit from A). Think of C without the reliability that any particular operation (function call, operator, whatever) maps to the same place more than once. This kind of thing gives most C-family compilers hives. It used to be that C++ was perceived as significantly slower than C - I don't see anyone complaining about it anymore, but Haskell and Self are more extreme examples. C++ made it easy to use jump tables. Haskell makes it easy to use recursion, lazy evaluation, and a bunch of other things. Self makes it easy to use dynamic inheritance, multiple inheritance, even cyclical inheritance.
What is most impressive about these kinds of languages is that you can build efficient implementations, without the compromises to the semantics that C (or its derivatives) entails. The fastest FFT library out there is in C, but the C code itself was generated by Haskell code (code that came up with some original optimizations along the way). The Self compiler is the root technology for Java JIT compilers (when Sun killed the Self project, all the compiler people went to work on "virtual machine" compilers). Self was able to hit 50% of the speed of optimized C while maintaining:- Full source-level debugging
- Garbage collection
- Checks for stack and integer overflow
- and the ability to change the "class" of any object at any time (I put class in quotes because Self is an object-oriented language without classes - part of the super-simple semantics)..
In short, there isn't anything wrong with clean linguistic semantics. But essentially every computer sold today is built around the von Neumann architecture, and non-von-Neumann semantics (like that used by Self and Haskell) are non-trivial to implement.Re:What's wrong with Haskell? (Score:2)
Being an (almost) purely functional programming language, I imagine that writing mathematical programs in it would be a piece of cake, but for anything else that requires states it's a royal pain in the but.
Re:What's wrong with Haskell? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, consider the expression,
which literally means and, by the way, is equivalent to your (fact 1000). Now, how much space is going to be consumed by its evaluation?Humans can easily see that the expression can be evaluated left to right, treating the operator (*) as strict, and, with the list defined by [1..1000] being built lazily, it is possible to evaluate the expression in constant space:
But is this what Haskell guarantees? Nope. An implementation might also do it like this: In this case the accumulator in foldl builds up a linear chain of thunks, which is evaluated only after the entire list is consumed.You and I can see that the second method is wasteful, but the language definition provides no guidance as to whether a Haskell implementation will choose the second or the more-efficient first. (In fact, GHC would until recently choose the second for this expression.)
Don't get me wrong. Haskell is, without a doubt, my favorite language. It's what I used for my entry [moertel.com] in this year's ICFP Programming Contest [inria.fr], and I consider it the best hope for a truly great mainstream functional programming language. I love Haskell. But its lack of intuitive space-consumption semantics is a serious weakness.
And, regarding your fact example, it doesn't really show off Haskell's semantics as much as its syntax. Why not show the classic Fibonacci Series implementation, which highlights Haskell's non-strict evaluation semantics?
Now, if that isn't a beautiful line of code, I've never seen one. Actually, the FFTW code was generated by code written in O'Caml [fftw.org] not Haskell.Cheers,
Tom
Re:What's wrong with Haskell? (Score:2, Informative)
fac n = product [1..n]
Re:I thought *I* had it bad enough... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's more abstract, so it often requires more thought from your side. But once you've gone there and explored and learned you are rewarded with a new way of viewing the world of computation and what goes on in it. Even if you never use it again, you'll at least know it's there and have a chance to understand why you do the things you do.
But sure, it costs a few hour of pure thought before you see that light. And you don't seem to be interested in bending your mind around something different in this manner.
Ah well. Your loss. Or mine =)
Re:I thought *I* had it bad enough... (Score:2)
even at it's lowest application functional programming techniques are worth knowing. ptyhon has function programming features map, filter, reduce and it's lambda notation.
Since studying haskell I've been applying functional techniques in my python code. It leads to some very elegant solutions that don't lost in their symatics. The code can become elegant to read as well as execute.
i find python's mix and match approach very useful.
i'm not much into perl but it has a map function too and no doubt other function features
Programming challenge (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Programming challenge (Score:1)
Well, an exception is the OS written in Brainfuck... but I'll leave it as an excercise for you guys to find it...
OS? that outta be ..uhh..quite interesting (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Programming challenge (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, deCSS HAS been written in Brainfuck. See this link on David Touretzky's home page [cmu.edu].
thoughts.... (Score:1)
Unless of course someone is REALLY skilled at hacking these languages
Re:thoughts.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:thoughts.... (Score:2)
I know perl. My boss even knows perl.
The lame "I-know-Visual-Basic!" interns where I work even know perl.
(Yes, I know I'm an intern, but... I'm not lame)
My point is that tons of people know perl. It's not exactly an obscure language... it's easily in the top 10 most used languages.
Re:thoughts.... (Score:1)
Re:thoughts.... (Score:1)
You've pretty much spelled out the death of programming under the OSS license.
Brainfuck! (Score:4, Funny)
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
Goddamnit, I just want to post brainfuck source.
Re:Brainfuck! (Score:2)
GCC front-end for brainf*ck (Score:3, Informative)
I'm right in the middle of writing one. Hopefully I'll get free time to go back and work some more on it, after GCC 3.0.2 gets released (in a week).
Why? Because I can, and it's fun.
My Favorite Quote (Score:4, Insightful)
It has to be a toss up between:
(from INTERCAL)The Sieve of Erosthenes test for prime numbers up to 65535 took over seventeen hours on a SPARC--it requires only a half second using C.
and
(from SMETANA) The language has two instructions: "Swap step n with step m", and "Go to step p".
Re:My Favorite Quote (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My Favorite Quote (Score:2)
With the operation translation tables, it looks like trying to write a program in it is similar to brute-force encryption cracking.
It is impressive that the one guy managed to write a "hello world" implementation.
Re:My Favorite Quote (Score:2)
Why'd they have to take the fun out of it by making one that works?
Last time I posted a link to this (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, here's Brainfuck [muppetlabs.com] Also here [catseye.mb.ca]
It's Turing complete, 8 instructions, and programs look something like this [catseye.mb.ca]
Re:Last time I posted a link to this (Score:1)
Yes, but what does that lengthy program DO?
Boy some of these languages look utterly pointless and useless...
Re:Last time I posted a link to this (Score:1)
That means the program when executed will print the entire source to the program.
Quines are pretty time consuming to construct. There are a couple of famous quines floating around in C as well.
So you can compile a quine run it, and pipe the output of the quine into a source file compile that, run it ad infinitum because the program generates itself
Jeremy
Re:Last time I posted a link to this (Score:2)
The terms 'depraved' or even 'vicious' come to mind. What a horrible horrible thing to do to ones brain
But then on the other hand....
What about var'aq? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about var'aq? (Score:1)
Not that far actually... Damian Conway [yetanother.org], author, amongst many other wonders, of Lingua-Romana-Perligata [cpan.org] which lets you program in Latin, uses a module that does computation in Klingon in his OO classes and has written a module that let's you program entirely in Klingon!
The most interesting point in both Latin and Klingon is that the order of words in a sentence is not significant. Instead declensions are used to determine the role of the various tokens in an instruction: 9 declensions are used to mark whether the variable is a scalar (nextum), an array (nexta), a scalar being assigned to (nexto) etc...
BTW Damian also wrote Acme::Bleach [cpan.org], which turns your code into a file that apparently contains the single instruction use ACME::Bleach... but that still runs!
On a more serious note (Score:2, Interesting)
The Beer Page. (Score:5, Informative)
http://core.federated.com/~jim/99/ [federated.com] (mirror)
This is a collection of programs written in over 200 languages designed to print the canonical "99 bottles of beer on the wall" song.
Re:After "Bert is Evil": tux quoque, fili mi? (Score:2)
Oh, great! Now just watch them try to blame it on the "open sores" movement.
Those who will not learn from history... (Score:1)
I had forgotten how many failed experimental languages there were, and was amused to see these odd academic and intellectual experiments still sprouting up.
One can only hope that one of these odd languages might spark the imagination, and actually provide a paradigm shift. Especially note worthy were "Befunge" and "Orthogonal" which are two-dimensional languages. More experimentation along these lines could only be good. Could a multi-dimensional language more efficiently encode parallel-processing software for instance?
Universal Machine in 371 Bits (Score:5, Interesting)
A mere 371 bits suffice to encode a universal combinator equivalent to ...(a) universal Turing machine:
11100110010100110010110011000010001110010101110010 110 0 100 1 100 1 100 0 010 0 110 0 001
0110010100110010110010100110010110010101110011001
0110111001100110011000101101011010010101110010101
1011001100101001100001000111001100101001001010010
0111000101110011000010001101110011001010011001011
1001100101100101011100110010100011011100110001011
0011011100110010100110011001010011000010001100011
Dan Brumleve [mailto] has a written a combinator interpreter in Perl that may be capable of evaluating Tromp's strange machine.
where's Refine??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:where's Refine??? (Score:1)
Excuse me?!
Unlambda (Score:2)
Users of unlambda should note that the "i" combinator is strictly speaking unnecessary. For further obfuscation, replace "i" with "skk".
Re:Unlambda (Score:1)
Users of unlambda should note that the "i" combinator is strictly speaking unnecessary. For further obfuscation, replace "i" with "skk".
Surely you mean "``skk".
Re:Unlambda (Score:2)
Yeah, that's right. Sorry, misunderstood the bracketing rules.
Incidentally, s and k can be constructed from another combinator (can't remember what it's called right now). Unfortunately it's not a supercombinator, so the graph reduction rules aren't simple to implement.
The Essies (Score:1)
Take a look especially at Sorted! [p-nand-q.com], which is a real cute language...
Another list of esoteric languages [purists.org] is also available.
Unlambda (Score:2, Informative)
I've written an Unlambda interpreter/stepper in Python, available here [uchicago.edu]. It's correct, as far as I know, but extremely slow for lengthy programs.
Incidentally, here's "cat" in Unlambda:
```sii ``s``s``s``s``s``s`ks``s`kk`kc``s``s`ks``s`kk``s`
Loads of fun!
APL (Score:5, Funny)
APL was defined by coding which wasn't particularly inventive but which required a complete keyboard overlay - it didn't use ASCII characters (except in text, as I recall), but rather a mixture of greek symbols and shit the author just plain made up. So in effect you had to match 'objects' to keys on the keyboard, a completely non-intuitive way of typing. Talk about watching your hands while you work....
Unfortunately the college was incredibly gung-ho on APL and thought it would revolutionize coding, so if we wanted to do any serious work we had to do it in APL. This meant that about a dozen of us sat around learning APL so that we could program what might have been (don't really know, but I don't know of any other examples in 1983) the most massively multiplayer Star Trek ship battle game to date (up to 127 players, although the mainframe usually came to a grinding halt when we passed the 70 or 80 player mark). We then passed this program off as a science project, which it was accepted as since no one else could read the damned thing.
Well, I guess it had a use after all....
Max
Re:APL (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it odd how every syntax I have ever seen in a computer language looks ugly and stupid to me, until I become fluent in it, then I won't abide any change after.
Re:APL (Score:5, Interesting)
APL was a lot more common than you might think. It was the first language to treat matrices as first-class entities, and so was popular for a time among the mathematics set. It was amazingly fast, in part due to its innovative use of lazy evaluation (e.g. if you only wanted a single column of a large matrix, it wouldn't bother computing the rest of it).
A bit of APL lore: Back in the late 1970's, Ken Thompson (one of Unix's creators) spent a summer at UC Berkeley (an event that was rather influential in BSD's development). Just for fun, he wrote an entire APL interpreter -- in one weekend. It was a real pain to work with since it used two-letter codes instead of the APL character set, but other than some of the quad functions (various OS primitives and so on) it was complete.
It's one of the more spectacular feats of programming I've ever heard of.
Re:APL (Score:2)
Dan was one of the computing gods at the University of Alberta. He did a good deal of work with SNOBOL/SPITBOL (SPeedy ImplemenTation of snoBOL). People who knew the group were impressed, but nobody was really surprised
. I have to say that spitbol was was an incredible language if you were doing string and list manipulation. Imagine, if you will, PERL on a combination of crack and LSD... It supposedly influenced the regex code in UNIX, but was (In my mind) far superior if you were doing interesting stuff.
YOu could do stuff like:
whitechar=any(" \t\n")
sp = whitechar arbno(whitechar)
# equivalent to perl regex whitechar+
salut="hello" | "hi" | "greetings"
friend="mike"|"john"|"sarah"
enemy="louis"|"ian"|"jim"
message salut sp (friend="my friend"|enemy="you slimy creep")
Even better yet, you could say
message salut sp ((friend|enemy)$name = f(name))
In this case f is a user defined function that takes the variable name (which contains whatever matched 'friend|enemy') and returns a string that replaces it. Rather than have f() return a string, it could also return a pattern that continued the match....
message (salut sp (friend|enemy)$name f(name))$sentence = g(sentence)
shadows of this ability are existant in the $1 and \1 constructs of perl, but snobol is far more capable than that, because you can match on (and replace with) the return value of functions called with intermediate match results.
(in all of these cases, we're matching the string in message)
One weakness of SNOBOL is that it was almost entirely unstructured. The if/then/else structure was implemented as tags on the end of a pattern (like above) that implicitly did a GOTO depending on the success or failure of the match. (does anybody remember the calculated GOTOs of fortran IV?). Pretty much everything was global, and you could (if I remember corectly) jump into (and out of) the middle of what would otherwise be considered a function definition.
There attempts to do a structured front end to SPITBOL (I think that it was called RATBOL (RATional spitBOL). Although it worked fine, it seemed to, somehow, lose some of it's magic. (perhaps it was just the hacker's yearnin for the obsefecuted(sp)).
Re:APL (Score:2)
For example, take a look at APLus [freshmeat.net], a GPLed language created at Morgan Stanley and derived from APL.
For more information about J (another offshoot of ALP) and APL, take a look at J\APL - the journal of APL [demon.co.uk].
Re:APL (Score:2)
The use of greek letters for all builtin functions meant that the phrase "it's all greek to me", took on a special meaning for second year computer science and statistics students.
One year, we got in a new chinese professor who's mastery of English was only slightly better than my understanding of Chinese (nil). I suggested to one of his frustrated students that she should try asking him questions in APL. At least then, they'd be on even ground.
Oh, grow up. (Score:2)
Incidentally, APL was invented by Kenneth Iverson [gte.net], who never taught at Pomona. Perhaps you're thinking of somebody involved in APL's descendent, J [jsoftware.com]. But neither language was the pet project of one prof.
Welcome to SpodNet! (Score:2, Informative)
My bad (Score:2, Funny)
argh... so many languages so little time (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you could also approach the task a little more systematically. A possible approach, and this is based purely on learning a language in order to improve one's thinking processes, rather than learning a language based on the marketability improvements possession of such knowledge brings, is to broadly catergorise them along the lines of 'problem solving styles', or 'programming mindsets' that they directly support or encourage.
Assuming no prior knowledge, you could start by learning procedural programming; a very good starting point is C. It is a small, compact language that will help you learn the basics of procedural programming; it's not a difficult language if you stay away, initially, from its more esoteric features like pointers and bitwise operators. Having learnt C, you will have a very solid grounding for learning languages such as JavaScript, C++, and Java because the 'syntactic core' of these languages is very similar.
Another procedural language is COBOL. It is quite a big language in terms of the number of reserved words ('verbs' in COBOL-speak) it offers. However, it is really quite a simple language and provides, as core facilities, tremendous file processing capabilities. In addition, it forces the programmer to be systematic, that is, you need to spell out exactly, and in painstaking detail, what it is you wish to do. In a way, its wordiness is its strength, and it is difficult to produce 'sloppy' code the way it is possible to do in, for example, C.
Next, you could tackle object oriented programming. You could start with either one of the very popular object-oriented languages, C++ and Java. Personally I would start with C++ as it is, I believe, more complex, and thus, more difficult to learn; if you master it, Java will come easy, and the hardest part will be simply to learn its rich set of packages (collections of objects).
Smalltalk is probably one of the purer object-oriented languages, is widely respected in the programming community, and, I should admit that the main reason I included it here is that its the next language on *my* list to learn. I've looked at a couple of Smalltalk code listings and have found it difficult, at first glance, to understand it; that being the case, I look forward to the challenge of learning it !
Now, for a couple of oldies, but goodies: LISP and Prolog. Neither of these has, as far as I'm aware, very significant commercial application, but if you are looking to try some truly 'different' programming approaches, in a bid to extend your thinking processes, then these are it !
LISP, for me, is a truly enjoyable programming experience. I won't pretend to be an expert in it, but by simply spending time with this language I have learnt so much about data structures, programming techniques, and, generally, problem solving techniques. It's a really good tool for 'doodling', that is, quickly whipping up little algorithms and immediately testing them. A definite 'must-learn' language !
Prolog is one I find fascinating. I'm still struggling with it, and although I've developed nothing more than simple database query applications with it, every time I work with it I find myself approaching a 'simple' problem in non-conventional ways, always forced to rethink how something should be done. I would recommend you look at this language to learn how to program in a truly non-procedural way, that is, to work 'with' the help of the language itself, rather than simply writing down commands for the compiler / interpreter to follow.
Finally, on top of these you could add interpretive 'scripting' languages, tools which are aimed more at 'gluing' applications together than being fully-fledged development languages in their own right (I know perl purists will probably scream, claiming this is heresy, but basically it is not so much a development language as a 'super-shell', an all-encompassing environment, almost an 'operating system within an operating system').
Finally, I should stress that, as a programmer, it is not just languages that you should be striving to learn, but to expand your knowledge in general. For example, acquiring general business, management, communication and 'people' skills will make you more aware of the 'real world' in which you must apply your skills.
While the idea of learning other programming languages is to extend your ability to identify and abstract problems, as well as adding to your 'armory' of programming tools, there is no substitute for a good grasp of your problem environment, that is, understanding the nature and type of 'problems' you will be asked to solve. Not every problem necessarily translates into a computer-based solution, hence the importance of also acquiring non-programming skills.
Re:argh... so many languages so little time (Score:2)
Re:argh... so many languages so little time (Score:2)
Actually, if I recall correctly, the backend for the Yahoo Stores site was (and still is) written entirely in LISP. This may have been mentioned on
As for learning:
- Some flavor of asm
- Modula-2
- LISP
- Smalltalk
- C
Then, once you've got your foundations down, use Perl or Ruby to get real work done...
its your fault (Score:1)
After "Bert is Evil", do we now have "Tux is Evil" (Score:1)
More here on CNN [cnn.com] (Scroll down to "Reno case has Malaysia link"), BBC [bbc.co.uk] (Scroll down to Cheney's photo), and Msnbc [msnbc.com].
Experts are poring over posters shown at pro-Bin-Laden protests, but so far no hidden [wired.com] tux has been spotted in any of them...
99 bottles of beer ? (Score:1)
BrainF***? (Score:1, Redundant)
Or maybe those stars are there to mask some letters? I wonder what they could be?
DD/SH -- The lost language (Score:1)
Is DD/SH now a lost language that only exists as a faint memory in the minds of the few surviving followers of yester-year and the dd/sh monks now awaiting their untimely death? Does anyone have a copy of the sacred parchament?
My favorite esoteric language... (Score:2, Interesting)
The Language List (Score:2, Informative)
It won't be complete if I don't include The Language List [unige.ch]. Not only this page contains resources for those esoteric ones, but also other "saner" languages too.
For those of you who want to create programming languages, make sure you read [aw.com] the underlying principles. If you know all these stuffs, your programming language will not be just a toy!
I just spent an hour (Score:1)
languages could be used as pieces to a puzzle.
reMorse (new site) (Score:1)
The new site is: http://members.tripod.com/rkusnery/remorse.html [tripod.com]
Here's a similar page (Score:2)
Another page on weird languages is here [catseye.mb.ca].
Don't stop at languages! (Score:1)
Eubonicode (Score:5, Funny)
sup
{
gimme fibo bitch
a be 1 bitch
b be 1 bitch
putou a bitch
putou b bitch
fibo be fibo widout 2 bitch
slongas (fibo bepimpin 0)
c be a an b bitch
a be b bitch
b be c bitch
putou b bitch
dissin fibo bitch
nomo
}
I wasn't expecting this! (Score:1)
In case you're wondering, I'm the bloke who administers ESOLANG.
double backwards for loops (Score:2, Interesting)
for (condition) {
statement1
statement2
statement3
}
the condition is checked, and statement1-3 get executed. Then statement3, 2, 1 get executed followed by the condition being examined. Essentially flow runs down and then *up* the block.
I always thought this was a kinda cool, half baked idea. Useful? No, not really, but cool nonetheless.
embarrassing Grace Hopper story (Score:2)
Around 1983 (+-2 years), Hopper visited the University of Alberta which was, at the time, ripe with computer language types. FLACC (Full Level Algol/68 Checkout Compiler) and, (I think) MAPLE were (partly) developed there. C, APL, SNOBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL/W, PASCAL, PL/1, PL/C, PL/360 and LISP were just some of the languages taught in undergraduate classes there.
In any case, A friend of mine was talking to Grace, and she commented that "Some of the people here were instrumental in the development of COBOL. I wonder why they don't mention it more?", to which Dan replied:
"Perhaps they're ashamed of it".
Another friend quickly pulled him aside and explained the history of Grace an COBOL. Apparently, you could see him blush through his (infamous) grizzly-adams style beard.
Intercal! (Score:2)
Re:If you read this before it gets Moderated. (Score:1)
call your recruiter, eh? (Score:1)
them: (looking at me with long hair but previous experience, then eyeballing the LINE OUT THE FUCKING DOOR of 18 year olds who want to be Special Forces
They don't want coders or anyone like that now unless you have a degree and want to be an officer..sorry, but offices are now swamped with people of ALL kinds wanting to help or take advantage of the situation or kill or whatever...just wait until the dust settles. Course..I wasn't taking you seriously..but the advice is for others.
Re:programming languages? (Score:1)
Screw that.
I've talked with these people on mailing lists and otherwise... they know a lot about computation, and for good reason. They have a powerful command of code in general, I find, and can answer just about any conceptual programming related questions. They're smart, and their work on these languages only hones their abilities... it's like they've created their own education system for themselves, just because you can't appreciate or understand it doesn't mean it's pointless.
lighten up, some of it's damn interesting, even if (Score:1)
Re:Stephen King, author, dead at 55 (Score:1)
No menton on any of the major news services.
But then again, an anonymous caller to a radio talk show would know.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Stephen King, author, dead at 55 (Score:1)
no wait, I mean a grating American.
Re:Stephen King, author, dead at 55 (Score:1)
He went on for years, pouring poison and hate into people's ears.
Now he's going deaf.
God acts in mysterious ways.
Re:Baffled in New York (Score:1)
Re:Baffled in New York (Score:1)
Well, listen here bitch, my city just got completely blasted a month ago. I walk around every day now wondering if I'm gonna blow up in a nuclear fireball by some crazy idiot human being who doesn't value the meaning of life and all I'm asking is for talented and smart people to help out a little bit. And I don't mean by building bombs to blast away each other. I mean by thinking and creating in a productive manner that's will help enlighten our race and make this a better world to live in.
So, if you want to call me small-minded, go right ahead, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind taking back that comment and showing a little decency to a fellow traveller in this crazy thing called life. You know, some things are just too important to take for granted, and one of those is respect for others. Thanks a lot for making my fucking day.
Re:Baffled in New York (Score:1, Offtopic)
But that really has nothing to do with the comment you made. The way your comment was written, frankly, annoyed me. You assume that because someone develops something like a toy language that they're not also doing something worthwhile. You also presumably don't see the benefit in doing things as an intellectual exercise. I imagine you're not familiar with the enjoyment that can come from creating an interesting piece of computer software. Perhaps you're not familiar with the joy of creation in general. If you are, and you've ever painted a painting or written a poem or essay, or composed a tune, try to imagine that other people may get similar pleasure from writing software, even if the software doesn't seem to do anything "useful".
Some people do crossword puzzles, or grow gardenias, but that doesn't mean they're not also doing something productive. I doubt there are many people out there designing useless computer languages for a living. In fact, I suspect the people who have invented useless computer languages are probably also doing something quite productive with their lives. As such, your comment was inappropriate. I responded in annoyance, and for that I am sorry - it would probably have been better to try and explain to you what you're missing.
Now, let me tell you something about the terrorist attack. You're not dead. If you "walk around every day now wondering if I'm gonna blow up in a nuclear fireball by some crazy idiot human being who doesn't value the meaning of life", it just means you weren't paying attention before. Nothing much has changed in the world in terms of what's possible - it's just that you've suddenly become aware of more possibilities. Some terrorists took advantage of overconfidence, and lax security and policies. The US thought it was immune to this stuff, and you probably were one of those who thought that. You're now having to deal with having your imagined security taken away.
I've got good news for you: unless you lost close friends or family members (in which case I'm very sorry), not much has really changed in the long run. In fact, the end result of all this may be that things get safer, not more dangerous. But even if it doesn't - the world is still full of risks, whether natural or human. You have more chance of being mowed down by a cab in the city than you do of being hurt by the next terrorist attack. More people than were killed in NYC get killed in earthquakes on a fairly regular basis. That particular attack was likely to be a freak event - terrorists aren't going to be as successful every time (think about the previous WTC attack, for example). The world is not coming to an end, although many people's illusions may be.
Try to put your situation in perspective and think about it more broadly. You're not the only person on the planet, the terrorists aren't after you personally, and nor are they likely to get you. Take your own advice and do something useful with your life. I'm sure you'll live a long time, and have a fruitful life. But your life is happening now, attack or no attack. Walking around worrying about it is not going to help. Criticizing other people who aren't obssessing over it isn't going to help.
In fact, doing something creative, that expresses the joy of living and your human capabilities, is probably one of the best things you can do for your own psychology, which needs a little help right now. Express your humanity in a positive way - it's the best answer to what the terrorists have done. "Living well is the best revenge", is the saying, and the current situation is a variation on that. The terrorist problem is not going to be solved overnight, and if you try to suspend all other activity until it is solved, you'll simply burn out and end up in the loony bin.
Re:But is it, Really? (Score:1)
That said, I will reply as though it were.
Inventing odd computer languages is a much better use of time than doing crossword puzzles for instance. If people get enjoyment from writing new, odd, programming languages, good for them. The proliferation of failed languages can help by exploring new ideas, and even provide a sort of Darwinian backdrop for evolving languages in general by show not only what works well, but what works poorly.
Re:wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes I have (Score:1, Interesting)
($_=HWX)and s|[IQ-Z!*B]X|EMLP VPS|and(tr@L-U@K-Z@),
s&(V|K)&++($A=$1)&ge&&print"${_}LD\n";
Re:Shakespeare Programming Language (Score:2)
Re:Sublimation (Score:2)
http://www.geocities.com/connorbd/varaq