Programming language analogies · 9:29pm Nov 18th, 2013
What I just wrote on a freelance coding website that asked what I thought of different programming languages:
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C++ compilation is a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Perl is an employee who does good work without much supervision, but would rather guess what you wanted than ask for clarification, and sometimes comes to work stoned.
LISP is Ted Nelson, or possibly Timothy Leary.
Java is the the only political candidate who can make the trains run on time, as long as you do everything exactly the way he says you should.
Pascal and Modula-2 are like Java, except they can't make the trains run on time.
SQL is a pidgin with no grammar or sense and only enough words to buy and sell in the market, but everybody knows it. It makes you a little dumber every time you use it.
Matlab, R, Mathematica, Maple, SAS, and SPSS are autistic geniuses who can tell you what day of the week any date in history fell on, but can't tie their own shoes.
C, Fortran, and COBOL mean you've been hired by the kind of person who insists that vinyl records played through a vacuum-tube amplifier are "warmer".
Legacy code is a minor gardening job that needs approval from the homeowners' association.
Pretty accurate.
Also, so much of this:
A pirate just stole all my code! What now?
This reminds me of ponies as programming languages. Although nothing here or there compares to "C++ compilation is a maze of twisty passages, all alike."
Java being dependable- where do you get that theory from? I swear, once I wrote the same section of code three times, and each time it behaved differently.
Atleast its syntax is actually, y'know, understandable, though. Some languages I see...
With older C++ compilers, the passages are also pitch black, and you are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Look, just set the XYZZY option to on in the makefile and... what do you mean you didn't install libshinybrasslantern?
Hey! I learned to program in Perl.
...in retrospect that explains a lot.
So whats .NET or SAP ABAP?
Now do Operating Systems!
And like everyone else, the C++ one was friggen gold.
1519108 Did you have all of your buttons buttoned?
1519072 Oh, yes, Pinky is Perl, Applejack is C/C++, and Derpy is BASIC.
Python seems like as hard a worker as Perl, but somehow you're just sure he's been dipping into the till.
And his tie is crooked.
1519269
Well yes, but every third encounter I tweak Java's ears.
I was about object to the C++ one, then I noticed you said "compilation" and oh god yes. I hate linkers and makefiles and library search paths so much.
Dat Matlabone. So, so true.
1519269
PHP feels a bit like Rainbow Dash. "Yeah, whatever, you declared that as a string, but it can be an array if you want. Who cares?
"Oh, hey, is that some HTML? Can I squeeze in there? C'mon, you'll barely even notice me. Ha! What am I saying? Everyone's gonna notice me!"
1519066
Be thankful you didn't get eaten by a grue.
1519113, 1519373
Two words: Hollerith cards. I'm just old enough to have programmed with them for one semester in high school. In FORTRAN. Heaven forbid you dropped your program on the floor, or got your job control cards out of order. I was also in the last class there taught how to use a slide rule; we checked our answers with our pocket calculators.
1519269
Assembler is a dragster. Only the mechanics who built it have any idea how to keep it running, and it lacks any creature comforts (seats are an option), but when it's tuned properly and firing on all cylinders it's the fastest thing on the street bar none. (Edit) And when it's not tuned properly, the engine will blow up, sometimes spectacularly.
C# is Java in a different colored shirt, but will stab you in the eye if you dare suggest that.
1519373
I once built an entire Linux system by compiling everything.
...have I ever told you how I got these scars?
1519485
Now that is old-school.
1519561
Your mad.
Python?
Anyone have one for MUMPS? Or is it just another C, Fortran, or COBOL, but better at buying and selling things in the market?
1519269
Didn't realize this before, but I did learn to program through BASIC.
I saw a grid of programming language analogies like this and Forth was the Unabomber. I have no idea what forth does, but I think that's hilarious.
That would make ActionScript the white suburban fourteen-year-old dressing and talking like a gangster rapper, and shouting over a headset mic on Xbox Live.
1519377
Damn, you beat me to it.
1519485 Oh, how I would have loved to have had the luxury of an assembler and punch cards! I had to type everything in hex, starting with the input and output drivers, which I had to write. If I wanted to go back and insert a byte, I had to rewrite the whole program. And I had to type it all in again every time I turned the machine off.
Assembly is also like an ancient runic language spoken only by a few old high priests, and if they leave out a syllable, everyone dies.
1519861 And you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow barefoot, am I right?
1519878 What, you had feet?
1519923 so you crawled? or did you do the worm?
1519923, 1519927
Crawl? In my day, youngster, we had to exhale hard and attempt to jet propel ourselves across the snow. Summer was when we really had a problem.
1519927 *Tries to imagine*
*boom*
1519861
Still better than changing jumpers, replacing vacuum tubes, and debugging by removing electrocuted moths shorting out the circuits. I'm not sure how many are left alive who actually started with that.
1519971 You've out-old-schooled me; it's just that I had an Apple ][+ with no hard drive and no assembler.
1519983
That wasn't me. Hollerith cards and magnetic ring core memory are as far back as I go.
1519998 I meant that the cards & core memory go back way before my time. But a high-end sixties machine was better than a low-end eighties machine.
No C#?
Umberto Ecco wrote a column in the early Nineties comparing Apple's operating system to Catholicism and Microsoft 's to Protestantism.
Source code was Kabbalah.
"I HAVE READ THIS BOOK! --did not understand one word..."
--The Frisco Kid
I take it you program either professionally or in your spare time. I've spent some time in the last couple days writing a high frequency trader (thousands per day, not millions) for a bitcoin exchange. It might be fun to have a competition to see who here can come up with the best algorithm.
1529178 Thousands of trades per day? Don't the transaction costs eat everything up? Does it make money?
1540697
Honestly, it probably won't hit more than several hundred per day unless bitcoin is going through one of its silly periods. The transaction cost on the first exchange I'm supporting is a percentage of the trade (0.2%), so small numbers means small cost, and there's no need for a large upfront investment. Bitcoin fluctuates enough that making more than 0.2% per trade, and doing hundreds or thousands of trades a day, can work.
It's also easy to convert bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies with large buy-sell spreads, automated traders, and no intra-exchange arbitrage opportunities, which suggests that either I'm missing something or that a lot of people there are vulnerable to book fading shenanigans.
I'll find out shortly (roughly a week, because school) if it makes money. I've written and tested everything except the age guarantees on information I pull from the exchange. Once that's up, I'll see how well fading works, then write a simple buy/sell/fade trader.