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A Warrior's Programming Language 298

Posted by Hemos from the dear-lord dept.
BlackNova writes "Var'aq is "a speculative glance at what a programming language on a Klingon computer system would look like." Make sure to read the Preliminary Specification and the Proposed Extensions."
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A Warrior's Programming Language More

A Warrior's Programming Language

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  • There are many more esoteric programming languages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by J.D. Hogg ( 545364 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @05:33AM (#2949513) Homepage
    My all-time favorite is Chef [dangermouse.net], which uses food recipes to create functional programs. Check out the Hello World souffle [dangermouse.net] :-)

    If you're into esoteric languages, the reference page is the Cat's Eyes page [catseye.mb.ca].

    • I also like Unlambda [eleves.ens.fr], but Brainf*** [qwest.net] is my language of choice.
      • I was trying to post Brainf*** [qwest.net] "hello world" example but unfortunately...

        Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.

        Strange... Maybe I'll send an Unlambda [eleves.ens.fr] example at least:

        ```s``s``sii`ki
        `k.*``s``s`ks
        ``s`k`s`ks``s``s`ks``s`k`s`kr``s`k`sikk
        `k``s`ksk
        It calculates and prints the Fibonacci numbers as lines of asterisks.

        It's quite challanging to parse that code, once you know the syntax.

      • The esolang culture is actually what inspired me to create var'aq in the first place. Chris Pressey, creator of Befunge and the person most directly responsible for giving me the idea for Var'aq in the first place; the Klingon angle happened to be the most convenient of its kind. I thought of doing an Elvish programming language as well (i.e. Sindarin-based) but Tolkien somehow left out virtually every mention of Elvish hackers in LotR :-)

        I've also kicked around the idea of a programming language based on Latin based on Chris' thoughts on using inflection in a programming language, but it's not one of those things that seems to come together easily...

        /Brian

    • Re:There are many more esoteric programming langua (Score:5, Funny)

      by rar ( 110454 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @08:00AM (#2949742) Homepage
      Now, if there is a recipe doing de-css in the program language 'Chef'...
      ... would cooking and serving a meal based on that recipe be illegal?

      I think it would be hilarious to refer to a meal as "a collection of food carrying an illegal decryption algoritm"...
    • My favorite esoteric language is also on that site, Piet [dangermouse.net]. It's the only language I can think of, aside from Befunge, that uses a 2-D array - an image, actually, that's supposed to look like abstract art - and direction, movement, etc, for instructions and program control. Someone *ahem* also wrote an interpreter [valueclick.com] for Piet with Perl and ImageMagick - Piet::Interpreter. Look for it on a CPAN near you.

  • Real Warriors (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kopretinka ( 97408 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @05:34AM (#2949515) Homepage
    Real warriors code using the command

    cat > prog.tgz

    • Re:Real Warriors (Score:5, Funny)

      by geggibus ( 316979 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @08:06AM (#2949750)
      Speak for yourself!.. personally i boot with a ramdisk and begin:
      cat > /dev/hda
      ;)

      /K
    • Or for excitable SHOUTING win-gnuts

      copy con: prog.zip

      would be a reasonable winner-dows analogue.

    • Re:Real Warriors (Score:3, Funny)

      by Phroggy ( 441 )
      The easy way:

      cat /dev/urandom > a.out

      and home for the best.
  • This page is sort of a speculative glance at what a programming language on a Klingon computer system would look like. The language itself is named var'aq, which happens to be meaningless in standard Klingon but sounds like it might be named after some famous Klingon computer scientist or mathematician. How the hell does this guy know that there isn't a famous Klingon computer scientist or mathematician? I'd like to see some credentials here, buddy! "Damnit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a programmer!" Suffice to say, this guy is a bigger geek than I could ever hope to be.

  • karma whoring (Score:5, Informative)

    by einstein ( 10761 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @05:37AM (#2949523) Homepage Journal
    google's cache of the site [google.com]
    you're welcome
    ---

    • Re:karma whoring (Score:2, Informative)

      by sander123 ( 120105 )
      And here are some [google.com]
      code snippets

      (
      http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:y1Zz_tiIDhI C: www.geocities.com/connorbd/varaq/vcode.html+&hl=en
      )


      It doesn't make much sense to me, but neither does klingon, so I gues its ok.

    • editors of slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gimpboy ( 34912 ) <john.m.harrold@g ... SD.com minus bsd> on Monday February 04, 2002 @09:19AM (#2949883) Homepage
      do you think it would be possible to post links to google cache in the main story? i'm sure the owners of the web sites would prefer it. what would it take to be a little more responsible and try to avoid squashing the little guys that provide your content? it must be nice to have so much bandwith that you loose perspective and forget that the rest of the world does not.
      • Why would the owners of the web site prefer that thousands of people go visit someone else's mirror of their site? They then continue thinking no one has stopped by, and if they depend on click-thru or referrals for even meager compensation, they are practically assured of none if people are going to a cache rather than the real site. That a site would achieve instant popularity or get the kind of publicity that Slashdot brings is truly a blessing and a curse at the same time. As such, the Slashdot approach makes no more or less sense than mirroring.

        A much better criticism, in my mind, would be to ask why Slashdot doesn't spend more energy getting actual stories rather than engaging in essentially mindless link promotion. And then one might ask why the majority of the Slashdot generated stories are the drivel of Jon Katz. There are a couple of editors who write decent stories, and once in a while a submission is actually more than a blurb... but I'm guessing Slashdot sees itself more as a recorder of interesting tidbits and a place to discuss those tidbits than a place where serious journalism occurs.
        • A much better criticism, in my mind, would be to ask why Slashdot doesn't spend more energy getting actual stories rather than engaging in essentially mindless link promotion.

          Because that's not what Slashdot is. You might as well lambast the authors of a bok of movie reviews for not including copies of all the movies. Slashdot *is* a collection of links, a few original essays, some interviews (which we're due for, guys), and most importantly, a whopping big forum in which to discuss said stuff.

          I'm guessing Slashdot sees itself more as a recorder of interesting tidbits and a place to discuss those tidbits than a place where serious journalism occurs.

          Yup. And it's much more interesting IMO, than ZDNet, CNet, TechTV.com or any other so called "real journalistic technical site". YMMV - go to the site that interests you. For me, it's Slashdot.

          --
          Evan "Did that sound like cheesy team cheering or what?" E.

          • I wasn't criticizing Slashdot myself, just offering suggestions to those who are. The only way Slashdot can *not* Slashdot other sites is to have the actual content hosted here-- which means they either deal with the sites to mirror the content here, or they create content specifically for Slashdot. Linking to an off-site cache is a poor solution for everyone involved. The cache is often incomplete, the images are still served from the original server in many cases, the site doesn't get traffic it deserves, and the people hosting the cache shouldn't have to serve Slashdot's traffic either.

            Sudden fame is a risk inherent in making a public web page. Slashdot isn't the only way to get a surge of traffic, after all. The only reason Slashdot should worry about it is that a discussion full of "well, the site is Slashdotted" is pretty unproductive.
        • The horrific bandwidth penalties that some people have to pay might be some incentive. A slashdotting is absolutely insane in scope & size. The very the editors could do is provide people with a wee bit of warning about what's going to happen, but that would require them to actually have some journalistic integrity, something they've said time and time again that they don't need since this is just a 'hobby' site.
      • Google doesn't cache images, and they're what choke web servers, since they generally consume both more bandwidth and more hits than the pages themselves. If you look at the Google cache of a page with six images, you still generate six hits on the actual server. So basically, this would generate a lot of no-revenue traffic for Google without helping the small sites survive Slashdotting much at all.

        Charming idea, though.
        • i hadnt thought of that, but there are other options. slashdot could provide a mirror, for a limited time, of the site if the editor thinks the site cannot handle it (mirror, wget, etc). hell this could even be encorporated into slashcode. i personally think the editors should be held a little more responsible for the effect they have on smaller websites. when i think about the /. effect i think of a giant child walking through a popluated village.
      • do you think it would be possible to post links to google cache in the main story?

        Or perhaps institute a "slashCache"?

        (nice ring to it, eh? :)

        Either way, the cool thing to do would be to have some sort of relay resource that would check to see if the site was up, and if it wasn't, then display the google/slash cache.

        Of course, it will be implemented probably about the time I submit a patch, and I've got too many other things to work on....

  • Hmm all out already (Score:2, Insightful)

    by McLaLa ( 15790 )
    Did anyone in the nanosecond that this geocities site actually had free bandwidth actually manage to get a mirror of the page?


    <grumble>
    I suppose it would be possible for editors to realise geocities sites don't go well on the front page
    </grumble>

  • Not a real language (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @05:40AM (#2949533) Homepage
    When I saw this two or three weeks ago at first I was kind of excited about it... the last link I followed implied that it was a finished language. I thought that was hysterical, a programming language written in Klingon! How nerdy can you get.

    But it's not. I found it rather dull, it's just a little mini-essay about what such a programming language might be like, and what it might be called. I found the whole thing very thin at the time. Of course, the guy might have done some work on it since I last saw it, I haven't followed the link yet.

  • Karma whoring... (Score:4, Informative)

    by wormyguy1 ( 266395 ) <hal@@@halbergman...com> on Monday February 04, 2002 @05:42AM (#2949541) Homepage
    Here's what part of the page I could get before Geoshitties killed it...

    -------

    I enjoy playing with "what-ifs" and that sort of thing. I've written a few fanfics for Star Trek and Babylon 5, and I've got my own grand scifi plan perking through my head (though it won't see the light of day for a long time to come). I've created a couple of languages a la Tolkien and I've run a few role-playing game campaigns. The idea of creating a culture from scratch is utterly fascinating to me, and that is where Var'aq came from.

    This page is sort of a speculative glance at what a programming language on a Klingon computer system would look like. The language itself is named var'aq, which happens to be meaningless in standard Klingon but sounds like it might be named after some famous Klingon computer scientist or mathematician. It's really something of a Klingon Basic, a simple, loosely-typed programming language designed mostly just to be used for programming things like command displays and high-level control systems. In its eventual final incarnation, we're looking at concurrency, advanced mathematics, and even native support for distributed programs (try finding that in the C++ standard library).

    This page is a bit more than that, though. In it I try to imagine what Klingon hacker culture is like based on what's known about Klingon culture in general. For example, it's a man's world on Qo'noS, Chancellor Azetbur's history-making tenure notwithstanding. Most men are warriors at heart, seemingly taking little heed of home life or those things that do not contribute to honor (why do you think Klingon sex is so rough? Klingon women get so little...). One assumes a rough-and-ready, make-do attitude that assumes that bigger-better-faster is at best a waste of time. A Klingon warrior might love to play Quake once in a while (but wouldn't admit it due to a lack of real blood), but would most likely see the 1GHz Athlon in the box being devoted to realtime, near-photorealistic slamming of texture-mapped polygons to be a dishonorable waste of computer resources. Far better, when you need power, to string a bunch of processors together Beowulf-style, yes?

    Var'aq and its accompanying information aren't quite here yet, but until they are you're welcome to send whatever you think might be of interest to this page.

    -------

    There is a Google cache here:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:62oDEag2flo C: www.geocities.com/connorbd/varaq/+&hl=en
  • The premise underlying this project is interesting: will different cultures create different programming languages? It's a popular idea that natural language and culture are very much intertwined. (Think 20 eskimo words for snow here.) However, a natural language is used to actually do things that make up culture. One wonders if the same goes for a programming language: the language will probably not as much influence a culture as the other way around.

    Another way to look at a language is as an expression of certain believes. This seems to fit the bill better. Will, for instance, a programmer with anarchistical tendencies prefer a language like Perl?
    • They don't *have* 20 (actually 50) words for snow.
      They have specification of snow.
      Soft snow, hard snow, dangerous snow, etc.
      It's like saying that we have 1000's of words for dog, because there is a word for each race.
      • well, I'm not the expert, but I was under the impression that they didn't have (or at least rarely used) one word that just means 'snow'. Much as a super car-buff will hardly ever call something a car, instead referring to it by it's make or model.
        • I KNOW this is offtopic, to venture on a tangent, it is similar to to asian languages have no word for "brother" in generic, they have younger brother and older brother. Same with sister. I think some of them have a different word for grandfather/grandmother, depending on whether it is the mothers parent or the father's parent. This is because family and relatives are too important to simply group in one word.

          IIRC, most of them have no unified word for rice either, a different word for whether it's in the field, harvested and cooked. Given that rice is such a big factor in their daily life and food, it's not too surprising.

          A lot of language concepts are inexctricably tied to culture and vice-versa, and I bet that Klingons wouldn't be any different if they did exist.
    • The theory (as I remember it) says something about programming languages being based on the spoken/written language of the creators. I don't remember all the details, so chime in with your own bits.

      Niklaus Wirth spoke a language with Germanic roots, which has some pretty strong rules for construction. Thus Pascal has pretty strong rules about how and where the language constructs can be used.

      C was created by Americans, a language with both strong and loose rules for sentence construction. It's a strong rule language with the ability to be very, very flexible.

      If the theory holds, then the Chinese will be the first to invent a language that can adequately manage three states: yes, no, and whatever.

      Discuss amongst yourselves.

  • confusing (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0123456789 ( 467085 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:02AM (#2949573)
    Like Perl wasn't confusing enough....

    • Re:confusing (Score:2, Funny)

      by QuickFox ( 311231 )
      Like Perl wasn't confusing enough....

      Perl was invented by Klingons to test the spirit of Earthlings.

      Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
    • See... [monash.edu.au]Perl could get worse.

      De duobus malis, minus est semper eligendum
      Of two evils, the lesser must always be chosen

  • klingon. (Score:5, Funny)

    by buckrogers ( 136562 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:04AM (#2949579) Homepage
    This is an interesting question. What kind of programming languages will a klingon develop. But I think that I want to examine the character of a klingon programmer (from the internet, original attribution lost):

    Klingon Programmer
    Top 20 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:

    1. Defensive programming? Never! Klingon programs are always on the offense. Yes, offensive programming is what we do best.
    2. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
    3. This machine is GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!
    4. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
    5. Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
    6. What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
    7. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
    8. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
    9. I have challenged the entire ISO-9000 quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest on the holodeck. They will not concern us again.
    10. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
    11. By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
    12. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
    13. Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
    14. Our competitors are without honor!
    15. Python? That is for children. A Klingon Warrior uses only machine code, keyed in on the front panel switches in raw binary.
    16. Klingon programs don't do accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi.
    17. Klingon multitasking systems do not support "time-sharing". When a Klingon program wants to run, it challenges the scheduler in hand-to-hand combat and owns the machine.
    18. Perhaps it IS a good day to die! I say we ship it!
    19. My program has just dumped Stova Core!
    20. Behold, the keyboard of Kalis! The greatest Klingon code warrior that ever lived!

  • This Is Wonderful (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:13AM (#2949595)
    Every time I fear I may be in danger of becoming too geeky, someone somewhere demonstrates that I have absolutely nothing to worry about ;-)

    Cheers,

    Tim

  • Problem's with the language (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nathdot ( 465087 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:31AM (#2949619)
    You can probably find something like this on the page if you bother to go looking:

    "It turns out Klingons have no function to save().

    So in adapting the language we simply used:

    stop(kill())

    which imparts almost the same meaning but remains true to the fundamentals of the beautiful nature of the language which is Klingon. Bj'nrak!!!"

    fuckwits.

  • Cautionary warning! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nathdot ( 465087 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:38AM (#2949628)
    Never trust any source of programming information that has a high likelihood of close proximity to badly photoshopped vulcan porn.

    Just a warning...

    ...It'll be hard to explain to your boss.

    :)

  • On Geekdom (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Astral Jung ( 450195 )
    Sure, I could make the well-used comment that as if learning Klingon wasn't quite geeky enough...

    But I won't. Instead, I will remind people that those who laugh at, say, a Klingon computer language, and then, go back to work on making Linux work on their Atari 2600, ought to reconsider their opinion.

  • Kind of pointless (Score:2, Interesting)

    by spacefrog ( 313816 )
    Isn't it rather pointless for slashdot to post a geocities link?

    They have one of the few "slashdot effect defense systems" that actually works. It goes something like this:

    The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer.

    And puhleeese don't try to tell me a link to the Google cache is an acceptable mirror. It's not. Maybe if it altered all of the links to *also* point to the google cache it would amost be acceptable. I have a feeling the nice google people don't do that for exactly that reason -- they don't wanna be a free mirror whore.

    "News for Nerds"? Any "nerd" who still uses geocities....

    "Stuff that Matters"? If it's hosted on geocities, it probably doesn't matter. If it mattered, it would be hosted somewhere where everybody could see it on a consistent basis!

  • OS and Hardware (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @07:10AM (#2949685) Journal
    Surely software design is greatly influenced by hardware and operating system design. So what would these be like on the Klingon homeworld?


    Well, the operating system would be called 'Klingux' and would incorporate pre-emptive strike multi-tasking.


    The hardware would obviously be a box with lots of blinking lights on it.

    • What operating system? I would have thought Klingons would want to code down to the metal.

      Any OS they would want would be strictly limited in scope like an I/O executive a file system and a simple CLI.

      Any system would run one application only, and extremely well. The GUI would be part of the application and touch screens whould be used for inputs. Mice would be banned due to being thrown across the room and destroyed by bad-tempered users.

      Think of the way that our Military use/abuse computers in the field. I guess that is the way Klingons would want to work.

    • Well, the operating system would be called 'Klingux' and would incorporate pre-emptive strike multi-tasking

      Actually, that's GNU/Klingux.
    • Well, the operating system would be called 'Klingux' and would incorporate pre-emptive strike multi-tasking.

      Ooh ooh ooh ooh! If there is an artist out there, *please* start working on a k'Tux logo! :)
    • Is it just me, or does the idea of a Klingon dressed up in one of those 'bunny suits' to go into a clean room just make you giggle.
  • Geocities doesn't support multiple downloads,
    therefore I propose that everyone who wants to
    read the links picks a time (GMT) with 5-minute intervals when they want to use the links and puts it in a reply to this post to avoid that multiple slashdot users try to access geocites at once.

    I pick 15.00.
    • Hmm. Maybe Rob et al. ought to consider incorporating something like this? I can see it now... Hundreds of people dropping back to the comments section yelling "F1r5t R3ad!!!!!!!"

      Dealing with the cheaters would be a problem though.

      Slashdot: "Your assigned timeslot is 02:45 GMT, August 22, 2028."
      User: "Aw, screw this..."

  • The impossibility of Klingons (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Scareduck ( 177470 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @07:41AM (#2949720) Homepage Journal
    The one problem I have always had with the notion of the Klingon Empire as practiced on "Star Trek" is that they couldn't possibly exist in real life. The Klingons are basically at the level of space bikers, or the Taliban, that is, they're mainly interested in what they can squeeze out of situations at this moment using whatever violent methods are at hand now. Research? Pure science? These things make not a great warrior!

    The Federation would have had these guys for lunch in a heartbeat.

    • The Klingons actually do have a source of technicians and scientists. This is the female of the species. Smaller and weaker than her male counterpart, she is however often more intelligent, and almost always better educated (by our standards.) Roles without sufficient honour for the men, scientific and technical positions in particular, are reserved for them. The advances of Klingon women, supplemented by the technological gains achieved by conquering more advanced, but less canny and battleworthy races, is responsible for their ability to compete.

      • I can't believe I'm actually getting into an argument about the feasibility of "Klingons".. *sigh*

        Ok, you say that Klingon women who are weaker and therefore not able to do 'honorable' things much are responsible for Klingon advancement? Who builds the ships?

        Would a great and honorable warrior lift a finger to implement the specs of a designed they do not see as an equal? Really.. If someone you look down upon told you what to do, how would you react?

        Certainly a strong, honorable and enlightenned leader could require warriors to build according to their females design, but this would either:

        a) Elevate the status of females to euqlly honorable to males, or

        b) end with the death of the leader, probably premature, for the continual humiliation of honorable warriors by forcing them to do work they consider dishonorable.

        The only alternative I see to all this, while still maintaining the intellectual role of the Klingon female, is slave labor.

        Males fight and rule.. Females design.. Slaves implement the designs under guard of males. That's the only way it could work.. But, with the exception of prison camps (ST-VI) we've not seen Klingons as keeping slaves.

        If slaves were used to such a degree as to build cities, space ships, power plants and so forth, they would necessarily be an integral part of the Klingon culture. They are not.

    • they couldn't possibly exist in real life. The Klingons are basically at the level of space bikers, or the Taliban, that is, they're mainly interested in what they can squeeze out of situations at this moment using whatever violent methods are at hand now.
      Yeah, they couldn't possibly have a huge, successful empire similar to what we have on Earth, like say the Mongols. I mean, any empire based on conquest, rape, and pillage couldn't possibly last!

      Oh wait, you mean the Mongols also had that kind of empire and they ruled a good part of Asia and Europe for over 200 years? Hmm, maybe the Klingon empire is not so far-fetched...
  • "Let's create a website on which people can create their homepages and when people come to visit those homepages, we put OUR ads on them and make money that way"

    "The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer."

    Anyone else missing something here? Or is it just me?
    • Go to that page again.

      What do you see under "The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer.""The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer."? An ad, of course! ;)

      (At least I presume it's an ad. I don't actually see anything myself except an eDexter placeholder, since I have Yahoo's image server blocked in my hosts file... ;) The only advertising information Yahoo has been able to impart to me in the last six months or so is "I am a [Man|Woman] seeking a..." ;-D)

      DennyK

  • The depressing part is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jejones ( 115979 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @07:56AM (#2949739) Journal
    That thanks to Okuda's refusal to define or use a consistent mapping between Klingon characters and sounds, which makes no sense whatsoever, we're stuck with piqaD for I/O.

  • Basic info (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @07:58AM (#2949741) Journal
    from the FAQ [google.com]:

    * I heard something about a "Klingon Forth". Is this it? And why isn't it called loSDIch?

    Yes, in a way. It's a stack-based RPN language like Forth or PostScript; the reason for this has nothing to do with an original desire to emulate one of those languages, but simply the unusual object-verb-subject syntax of Klingon. This sort of dictated the required form of the language right up front, ruling out a more traditional ALGOL-like syntax (based on English). Stack-based languages are actually easier to parse anyway, especially in Perl: just chomp and process. It is also an impure functional language in the same vein as Lisp or ML; it supports local variables, but it is really intended to do everything off the stack.

    As for calling it loSDIch (Klingon for fourth), that would be an obvious joke title to anyone who actually spoke Klingon; this being at least a semi-serious exercise in artificial culture development, such a title would be noticeably silly at best. var'aq is actually completely meaningless, though it suggests identification with a famous Klingon mathematician or computer scientist in sort of the same way as Pascal recalls Blaise Pascal or Ada recalls Ada Lovelace. In any case, the name var'aq came before the form of the language. (In any case, var'aq is based more directly on PostScript anyway. But they're all part of the same family.)

    [...]

    In terms of genetics, var'aq is the bastard child of a back-room tryst between PostScript and Lisp after a Star Trek convention.

    [...]

    * Why doesn't this construct translate to its PostScript/Forth equivalent?

    The question is one of verisimilitude. The likelihood of a Klingon concept being an exact translation of its English equivalent isn't always good. Consequently, pure translation of an Earth language might make for a cute joke, but it would sacrifice plausibility. A prime example is the qaw/qawHa' instructions, which perform the same function as PostScript's mark/cleartomark instructions but literally translate to remember/forget; the idea is that the metaphor chosen in Klingon might more reflect the purpose of marking the stack than the actual act. Incidentally, It's quite true that many of the idioms chosen for var'aq are anything but obvious. This is the reason why; though mathematics is considered universal, it's not too likely that everything would be described in the same way. (That said, I did cheat in a few places; for example, the word for logarithm is a direct translation from the Greek logarithmos, meaning roughly "logic-number".)

    For a rather thorough and creative discussion on the issues involved in translation, you might wish to look at Le ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter (the author of the hacker classic Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid), an intricate and well-written look at the pitfalls of translation between languages.

  • Observation... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by weird mehgny ( 549321 )
    It is a bit pointless by Geocities to shut down the page due to "exceeded data transfer quota" since the "temporarily unavailable" page in this case is three times bigger...
  • I didn't look deeply into the language but if Klingons are going to use design patterns when developing code, it must be these [agcs.com]. (Detonator, Commando, Visitor from Hell and the like).
  • When I was in my freshmen year, a colleague emailed me a set of precompiler defines that would turn C++ code into ebonics C.

    I have searched in vain for this on the net... that was in '95. Does anyone have information on ebonics C?

    :)
  • Hi,

    Need place to put you site and get away from eveil geocities...contact me.
  • "That's not right. You there... Policeman... Please take me away from this insanity."

    spoken by 'Cave Guy' aka 'Royce '
    from the cartoon 'Freakazoid'
    (quote approximate)

    Not only are we making up a language based on a TV show, we're making up a computer programming language based on that.

  • var'aq (Score:3, Interesting)

    by willhelm ( 12091 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @10:18AM (#2950051) Homepage
    The guy who made var'aq is this guy I knew in college. He's a fascinating fellow--only he could create something like var'aq.

    Anyhow, the interesting thing about var'aq is that because it runs on Perl, it's pretty ubiquitous meaning that if you really hate your job and feel the need for revenge, just go rewrite the production administration scripts in var'aq and then quit.

    • Re:var'aq (Score:3, Informative)

      by pne ( 93383 )

      Anyhow, the interesting thing about var'aq is that because it runs on Perl, it's pretty ubiquitous meaning that if you really hate your job and feel the need for revenge, just go rewrite the production administration scripts in var'aq and then quit.

      You can get a similar effect by translating your scripts to use a source filter such as Lingua::Romana::Perligata [cpan.org] or the newer Lingua::Sinica::PerlYuYan [cpan.org]. Read Perl in the original Latin or Middle Chinese!

    • You forgot the last part of the revenge scenerio:
      Contract back at 250 an hour, take 2 years to fixit and rub your boss nose in your new sportscar.
  • Klingon Programs are not released, they escape.
  • Oh My God, you killed the site! You Bastards!

    The site has exceeded it's data limit, according to GeoCities!
  • This geocities is weak.
    It has dishonored itself by crashing after just a few puny connections!

    I would like to preface this by saying, yes, I know Klingons are fictional.

    Consider, the only contact Terrans have had with Klingons is confrontational. Naturally are perspective of them is scued. The must be technical side of there culture and it has to have less confrontational means of imparting information. Other wise it would look something like this
    "The compiler would optimize your code if you did this instead"
    "How dare you insult my programming skills, we must battle to the death!"
    Not the best way to get ahead.
    OTOH it must be nice being able to challenge spammer to the death!
  • A few months ago I had the idea of translating KDE into Klingon (and later to reuse those translations for other projects).

    I did not find a lot of useful responses on the tlhIngan-Hol mailinglist [kli.org] of the Klingon Language Institute [kli.org], but perhaps this is the right place (and time) to ask.

    Please decipher my e-mail address and contact me if you're interested.

  • If the federal government dares to intrude upon my corporation again, then I Mog, son of Gates, will will give them a taste of my bat'le. Glory to the empire!
  • Guess the Vulcans can do it, as well...

    A small http client written in SPOCK (Simple Programming-Oriented Computer Kode [yes, Vulcans use KDE ;) ]):


    server=mindmeld(127.0.0.1:80);

    if(server.type==Human) // Try harder
    server.send("rm -rf emotions");

    if(server.state==illogical)
    eyebrow->raise(); // fatal error condition

    think("GET / HTTP/1.1\nHost: 127.0.0.1\n\n");

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