(We've discussed Chaitin before).
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 6/11/04; 12:40:04 PM
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Now at last we can have meaningful, objective measurements to decide what the best programming language is! :-)
Posted to fun by Brent Fulgham on 6/11/04; 12:39:56 PM
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Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 5/23/04; 3:46:32 AM
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MP3 (ie sound) file at link. From the CSE Band via the eclectic Computational Complexity Web Log.
Apologies for two fun posts in two days, but some of these had me laughing out loud.
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 5/2/04; 6:08:22 AM
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(from the concatenative list - hope the url stays current as it looks susipiciouly like a dhcp address)
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 5/1/04; 7:00:17 AM
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Now I should introduce myself and thank Ehud for letting me join the editors of LtU, it's a real privilege to be a small part of the programming languages weblog.
Hi folks! My name is Danny, and I'm a Semantic Web developer - my posts here will generally be on that subject. Rather predictably I have a blog of my own, but for SemWeb-related material on a blog I'd recommend Planet RDF, which aggregates material from various other weblogs on the topic.
Thanks Ehud!
Posted to fun by Danny Ayers on 4/16/04; 2:40:24 AM
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This site has GM MIDI files of algorithmic music determined by mathematics and the musical preferences of a human.
(page gives me annoying script alerts, but works fine past that point)
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 4/11/04; 9:55:20 AM
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I am trying as hard as I can not to link this item to the evolutionary debate going on in the discussion group...
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 4/2/04; 5:36:57 AM
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Idiot 2: Ah yes, but YFL is bad at doing Y, which MFL is great at.
Are we all idiots? ;-)
Posted to fun by Dan Shappir on 2/28/04; 12:33:46 PM
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Virtual people get their own games
Human players of The Sims, which gives them control over virtual people, can now have their creations run their own cities full of virtual people.
Posted to fun by Patrick Logan on 2/17/04; 4:53:01 PM
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There are 100 prisoners in solitary cells. There's a central living room with one light bulb; this bulb is initially off. No prisoner can see the light bulb from his or her own cell. Everyday, the warden picks a prisoner equally at random, and that prisoner visits the living room. While there, the prisoner can toggle the bulb if he or she wishes. Also, the prisoner has the option of asserting that all 100 prisoners have been to the living room by now. If this assertion is false, all 100 prisoners are shot. However, if it is indeed true, all prisoners are set free and inducted into MENSA, since the world could always use more smart people. Thus, the assertion should only be made if the prisoner is 100% certain of its validity. The prisoners are allowed to get together one night in the courtyard, to discuss a plan. What plan should they agree on, so that eventually, someone will make a correct assertion?
Would you have chosen Python, like this guy here, as the language of choice for playing with this puzzle?
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 12/14/03; 6:54:22 AM
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I am not sure this really qualifies as fun, but what the heck...
Among the languages you'll find on this web page are Transact SQL, LyME, ColdFusion and even Icon.
But don't worry: Haskell is also included
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 10/19/03; 7:35:14 AM
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Quick: Do you know the origin of the names Oberon and Miranda? How about Lua?
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 9/9/03; 1:29:53 AM
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I got 8 out of 10
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 8/13/03; 6:03:31 AM
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For those who don't have that much free time, but do have a good supply of coffee, don't forget the 24 hour lightning division.
I did search, and was surprised to find no reference here on this year's contest, so apologies if I missed something
Is the picture a clue? Are Ferrari really sponsoring a competition to find a new AI for their lead driver?
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 6/18/03; 1:21:32 PM
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And now, an Intercal version!
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 6/7/03; 10:34:30 AM
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It can be fun to play around with this program.
A perhaps more subtle thing to notice is that the function to be optimized is written in C, and the superoptimizer relies on the C compiler to compile it correctly. The optimizer itself doesn't understand C, nor does it have to.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 5/11/03; 2:15:43 AM
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Lately we have been swamped with Bill Gate's new .NET vision. Once again even respectable people are crying out that C++ and assembler programmers will become extinct dinosaurs. My reaction to that is: "It's not fair!" Why are they always picking on assembler programmers? We don't do a lot of harm! Just because we like to have total freedom and like to be close to our hardware doesn't make us bad people. Go pick on someone else (like LISP programmers. I don't like them).
Frankly, I was getting a little tired of this whole discussion, so I decided to do something about it - by bringing x86 assembler programming into the .NET age. Well, at least to allow ASP.NET pages to be written in 80386 assembler.
A worthwhile effort if ever there was one!
Posted to fun by Dan Shappir on 4/30/03; 12:13:51 AM
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Note: That the two programs do require that JavaScript be enabled. I'm in the process of moving my pages to a website that doesn't have the annoyance of popups, but you'll have to live with it for the time being.
BTW: Consider this punishment for not answering my question about the Jay Birds. :-)
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 4/19/03; 1:43:27 PM
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This from ll1-discuss. No URL as its so new it hasn't made it into the archive.
In a move which surprised industry analysts, Yahoo, Inc. has confirmed that the software which runs Yahoo Store, which was in the process of being converted from its original implementation in the computer language lisp to the C++ language, will be converted back into lisp as soon as possible. A Yahoo spokesman, who requested anonymity, had this to say: "Boy, that was really embarrassing. See, the reason we wanted to get rid of lisp is that none of us could read any of the code because of all those silly parentheses. But just last week, we found a text editor (called "emacs", I think) which has this amazing feature -- it actually can highlight the opening parenthesis that corresponds to a closing parenthesis. That just blew us all away. Once we had that killer feature, we knew that it was in our long-term interests to go back to lisp -- it's much more flexible than C++. Unfortunately, we'd already converted everything to C++ already... if any lisp programmers are reading this, you might want to fax us your resume." The spokesman went on to say that he'd heard great things about something called "closures", which he believed were a way to seal code against bugs or something like that.
*cough*
Dubbed NewCode, the language promises to revolutionise software development, as the language makes it impossible to express a security vulnerability in a program's source code.
"We were inspired by Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which there is a language called NewSpeak which made it impossible to express political dissent," says the group's leader, Julia Jones. "NewCode was developed with similar goals, but a different focus.
This looks very interesting!
Posted to fun by Dan Shappir on 4/1/03; 1:04:07 AM
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Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren't there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax.
This sounds like a really useful PL.
Posted to fun by Dan Shappir on 4/1/03; 12:53:38 AM
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I guess this is a classic case of people with way too much time on their hands ;-)
Posted to fun by Michael Vanier on 1/14/03; 1:50:17 PM
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I really don't know. APL sure does separate the men from the boys...
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 11/30/02; 11:57:13 AM
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Code and Personality. How to tell your personality type from your code. Kevin Marks & Maf Vosburgh
People with different personalities write the same code different ways. Unfortunately, not all these ways actually work, but people can learn to change...
This is more about software engineering than about programming languages, but it does tell you something about designing languages. If you are an optimist, C is not the language for you. Or maybe: If you still use C, you really are an optimist...
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 9/26/02; 4:47:42 AM
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An experiment in rote memorization.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 8/4/02; 12:58:30 PM
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The problem hasn't been announced yet, of course, but it's time to start thinking about a team!
[Author,
Citeseer]
(Note: Citeseer links are useful for tracing papers that cite or are cited
by the paper and also getting the paper in different formats.)
Posted to fun by jon fernquest on 7/29/02; 12:21:22 AM
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The Two Doofuses OR Why Type Safety and the Garbage Collector Really Exist.
Take the time to read this. It is funny.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 6/14/02; 8:50:33 AM
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If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap.
Not really about programming languages, but quite funny none the less.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 5/20/02; 11:59:51 AM
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The idea is more serious than it seems...
Thanks for the link, Jay!
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 3/9/02; 10:52:14 AM
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Cool hack (uses JavaScript and Flash).
For the last problem you must know a bit of Lisp. The rest can be done in any language you want.
Anyone wants to post cool solutions, in cool languages?
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 2/2/02; 1:16:59 AM
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So now you know why C "pointers" should really by called "first-class reified locations with dynamic extent." ;-)
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 1/24/02; 6:00:51 AM
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With the major defence crises of the 1980's - Oliver North, Irangate, etc., it is becoming increasingly obvious that Ada simply lacks the necessary facilities for generating truly paranoid programs. What is needed is a language which is not merely user-indifferent, but totally user-scared: in short, a Paranoid Programming Language.Who could meet the challenge? IBM? No, too neurotic already. DEC? No, VMS was far too paranoid. It fell eventually to your humble editor and his motley crew of hackers to design, implement, debug, y'know, the LOT, the ULTIMATE programming language one cold evening on the way to Alcuin College Bar.
So, what features does PPL offer the user?
With tongue firmly in cheek, from a discussion of contracts on the LL1 list...
Posted to fun by Bryn Keller on 1/11/02; 3:26:55 PM
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This a classic, but I think we haven't linked to it yet.
Long live Fortran!
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 12/17/01; 10:38:29 AM
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Practical semiotics...
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 11/20/01; 9:22:57 AM
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APL: The chicken crosses the road, but nobody else can figure out how you made the chicken do it.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 10/4/01; 9:49:38 AM
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From an implementation point of view it is interesting to note the Robcode uses a custom security manager to allow custom Java classes written by anyone to run safely.
Another site has links to several more pages dedicated to Robocode.
When thinking of programming langugaes we usually restrict ourselves to thinking about how they are used to describe computation, and forget that like natural languages they can be used to produce puns, word games etc. Some even create poetry and plays in their programming language of choice...
Sociolinguistics studies the variety of social functions of language.
Answer ten simple questions (Do you like cats?) and be told what's the Scheme environment for you...
More interesting personality test: what can you tell about the personality of the test's creator, from the the way the test matches test answers and Scheme implementations?
Since one of our contributing editors is on the mend from programming languages, I thought it appropriate to discuss the relationship between programming languages and music languages. As for myself, I've been slowly trying to learn the acoustic finger slicer but I'm no where near good enuf for it to encroach on my hobby in programming languages. :-)
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 6/9/01; 7:56:02 AM
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my $f = `fortune`;
and
my ($f) = `fortune`;
The answer: a police record. Sounds incredible -- but true.
One teenager was not aware of that difference and ended up with a police record. The article lucidly explains what happened.
As Oleg puts it: "The accident makes everyone appreciate the context of Perl operators,and the fact that parentheses sometimes can make a huge difference. It's noteworthy that Randal Schwartz seems to acknowledge that Perl is a mess, with no fixed and consistent rules."
Thanks, Oleg!
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 6/4/01; 12:23:35 PM
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NB deadline for entry is today, I believe.
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 5/18/01; 1:13:11 AM
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Seems that all is not well in the land of VB, as MS tries to clean up the language a bit and fit it into the mold of their .NET framework. Of course, coders that rely on the numeric value of truth (as opposed to Not False) probably deserve having their software break (and they probably deserve VB even more). :-)
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 5/14/01; 1:36:29 AM
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There's also an effort to go forward with the page, though it may be too preliminary to judge who will ultimately maintain the site and provide additions. (The original site hasn't really been maintained since '98).
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 5/6/01; 11:56:57 PM
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The answer to the first question is the standard one. Because Quantum Computing (QC) is out there. Because many, many bright people devote their time to advance the theory and the experiments. Because new papers are being produced on daily basis for the past few years. Because it does not look any more like a meteor about to burn out and die. Because it is a bleeding edge of science and technology. Because it is an intellectual challenge.
Looks like great fun. If you don't know your QC from your GC, there are some useful references at the end (some of them to online papers).
It's Friday... :-)
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 4/6/01; 7:28:47 AM
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San Francisco, CA - Recent results from standardized Perl Fluency Test showed that 99.99% of US high school seniors can't read Perl. This disturbing statistic shows that American students are painfully unprepared for life after graduation...
..."Teachers need to start with simple phrases like $RF=~tr/A-Z/a-z/; and work up from there. We really need to start teaching this in first grade if kids are ever going to understand this by high school."
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 4/1/01; 2:08:32 PM
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[solutions in 21 languages]
Posted to fun by andrew cooke on 3/23/01; 12:16:31 AM
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Quite a few epigrams are about programming languages. With some of them I even agree
This is a great excuse to advertise our quotations page.
If you have interesting quotes, please share them.
Use the discussion group to voice your opinions about these quotes.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 3/19/01; 12:23:29 PM
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Fun programming language brain teasers are always welcome around here.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 2/20/01; 8:15:56 AM
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If anyone finds something that merits special attention, let us know!
Perhaps we should have a 'quick links' department?
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 2/16/01; 2:58:08 PM
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Larry is asked about Perl's role in the world, and his role in the Perl world. Touches on the sociology of programming languages, a topic mentioned here a few days ago.
The interview covers more general issues like opensource vs. free software, and software patents; tough most of the time it is hard to tell if the answers are not tongue in cheek.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 2/12/01; 7:02:25 AM
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SILK is intended as a scripting language for Java.
This paper gives an in depth look into the design of SILK.
Posted to fun by Ehud Lamm on 2/9/01; 3:58:01 AM
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Calling XML a technology bothers me. XML isn't much more than one of those hobbyist Dyno label makers you use to dial up the letters and punch a name into a plastic strip.
Ok, so the article is really a plea about why Sun should GPL Java. I don't necessarily agree that Sun can or should GPL the code, but it would be nice if they opened up the definition of the language, VM, and API's.
Posted to fun by Chris Rathman on 2/1/01; 7:17:03 AM
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