"1996 - James Gosling invents Java. Java is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Sun loudly heralds Java's novelty.
2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#'s novelty."
1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots
both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied
with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from
that invention he invents C and Unix.
This was actually a remix[1] and nod to the legendary guide, "Shooting yourself in the foot in various programming languages,"[2] which has slowly evolved over the course of usenet, gopher, and websockets.
I'm convinced that this list will one day be fed recursively into a prolog console and become skynet.
1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high costs caused by a post-war depletion of the strategic parentheses reserve LISP never becomes popular[1]. In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP (now "Lisp" or sometimes "Arc") remains an influential language in "key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension"[2].
[1] Fortunately for computer science the supply of curly braces and angle brackets remains high.
The wonderful thing about Lisp though is that you can write a macro to produce more parentheses! However, to do this you have to be able to write a macro.
Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"
Yeah, it also says that Larry Wall came up with Perl by falling asleep and hitting his head on the keyboard, when in fact Perl was created through a genetic algorithm -- that's why it takes so long for Perl 6 to happen, because those specs they call Synopses keep changing and therefore the fitness metric is not stable.
Ouch, down-voted. Who said programmers have no sense of humor? Well how about this way:
"Mental pleasure are never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by repetition, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment."
- Nathaniel Cotton
Ok, a third time for the literalists, but I think it is my last attempt. Nothing spoils a news.ycombinator.com comment party like the scolding professor who comments: "We've had this story posted a number of times here. One ruler to the hand for each iteration." Particularly with something so comical. This blog post should be re-posted at least monthly. And for the humor-impaired weekly.
No do as you will with me cruel world. You can take away my karma and even my upvote, but you can't take away my dignity.
(On the other hand, if the down votes were for recommending GOTO instead of GOSUB, then this is completely understandable.)
It was a good joke and there were some nice comments. If you want to relive the comment thread again and again, the web is full of places where the joke would still be fresh.
HN would be just a little bit better without these "lets do the comment party again" threads.
Appreciate your reply, and without needlessly belaboring the issue any more then I have, perhaps a "greatest hits" page for worthy articles would be in order as suggested below. Because truly, it can be difficult to ensure seeing every worthy article that makes it's way up the HN page.
Legend has it that Casual Friday in that golden age of IBM meant that you could work that day with your suit jacket unbuttoned.
Since we're all tossing out our favorite lines, I'll nominate the Prolog entry. I know nothing about Prolog but it still gives me a laugh on every read. His goal is to create a language with the intelligence of a two year old. He proves he has reached his goal by showing a Prolog session that says "No." to every query.
They used to sell computers in stores that you could walk up to and program. BASIC was the command prompt for some computers. The above was the inevitable result.
Actually I was thinking more along the lines of programming the SID to output a sawtooth waveform and modulate it for extra annoyance, but whatever floats your boat.
2003 - A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reese's Peanut Butter
Cup ad featuring somebody's peanut butter getting on
somebody else's chocolate and has an idea. He creates Scala,
a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented
and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and
each promptly declares jihad.
If you're the sort of person who has read the Jargon File, understands algorithmic complexity, and finds beauty in Hofstadter, you probably know everything in Gleick's book. I kept waiting for a punchline, but there wasn't one.
2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#'s novelty."
Hands down epic definition win.