October 27, 2006

Six Word Stories about Programming Languages

Inspired by this article from Marginal Revolution (which, in turn, was inspired by this article from Wired), I’ve already written a couple of Six Word Stories.

But I think it would be fun to try to write some that are constrained by the domain of software programming – i.e. stories about various programming languages, and maybe things related to programming.

Eclipse

Eventually, Eclipse became its own plugin.

C#

I am so better than Java!

Java

How did I become today’s COBOL?

Ruby

Rails, Rails, Rails… What about ME???

Rails

Must not… succumb to… the hype!

PHP

Rails? Hah. Flash in the pan.

Python

I’m just as good as Ruby!

User Submitted: “Because beautiful is better than Ugly.”

Notepad un-indented my code. Oh Shit!

Visual Basic

I was “it” once! What happened?

Perl

They’ll come crawling back. You’ll see!

I was the original web service.

C++

Hello World\n*hF3#lk 38&1@n a))$@ ~!P:l fl

Smalltalk
All your concepts belong to us.

Lisp

(no ‘they all belong to (us))

COBOL

Without me there wouldn’t be PCs.

FORTRAN

Without me there’s no Neutron Bombs.

IntelliJ

“No can do, Dave.” IntelliJ wrote.

Visual Studio

And in the darkness, bind them.

Update: Added a bunch of new ones, some grammar edits.

Update 2: Lots of visitors from Reddit. Thanks for stopping by.

Update 3: People keep adding great new ones in the comments. I’m also regularly adding some of the best from the Reddit comments as well.

Update 4: My historical accuracy has been challenged on the Fortran/H-Bomb story, so, like any good author, I’ve re-written it to portray a more accurate plot.

90 Comments »

  1. very funny.. espcially the Lisp/COBOL :)

    (can anyone think of a better one for python? perhaps “because beautiful is better than ugly”)

    Comment by foo — October 27, 2006 @ 11:11 pm

  2. [...] Lest you miss it, Indefinite Articles (an interesting blog, specially if you like Ruby) has posted a collection of Six Word Stories about Programming Languages. Reminded me of these programming haikus. Funny and, as is often the case with really good humour, insightful. I also had a good laugh with this Agile Development’s Devil’s Dictionary. Just another feed in my list. [...]

    Pingback by Six Word Stories about Programming Languages « programming musings — October 27, 2006 @ 11:12 pm

  3. Thanks, I’ve added it to the list.

    Comment by jb — October 27, 2006 @ 11:22 pm

  4. RPG

    Keeping the plugboard paradigm alive.

    Comment by Pierre Cloutier — October 28, 2006 @ 1:15 am

  5. Six Word Stories about Programming Languages

    Six Word Stories about Programming Languages

    Besonders gut gefällt mir:

    Perl
    They’ll come crawling back. You’ll see!
    I was the original web service.

    Trackback by Nicolai's Blog — October 28, 2006 @ 1:37 am

  6. Some more:

    Erlang

    An avalanche of threads. We survived.

    Lisp

    You have it, you have them all.
    (Inspired by Federico Heinz).

    Smalltalk

    A metaclass inherit a metaclass inherit…

    Comment by Pupeno — October 28, 2006 @ 2:01 am

  7. Six Word Stories About Programming Languages

    Hilarious page with Six Word Stories about Programming Languages…. well, funny for programmers anyway :) …

    Trackback by UFies.org — October 28, 2006 @ 3:29 am

  8. Python:

    Because explicit is better than implicit

    Comment by Victor Kryukov — October 28, 2006 @ 3:40 am

  9. Some good ones from Reddit user kg2:

    Logo: Do you like turtles? I do!

    Tcl: Lisp would be better without types.

    Scheme: Who needs looping? Tail recursion’s sufficient.

    APL: Who needs words? (Perl, you sellout.)

    Forth: Your firmware solved Towers of Hanoi.

    Comment by jb — October 28, 2006 @ 4:24 am

  10. Python:
    self.this self.is self.irriating

    C:
    CPU bound? Suddenly I make sense.

    Visual Basic: So safe. So friendly. So useless.

    LISP: Recursion is recursion is recursion is…

    Comment by Devon Grey — October 28, 2006 @ 6:40 am

  11. APL: one one rho iota random one
    (it’s just not the same without the APL font)

    Comment by BobCat — October 28, 2006 @ 7:23 am

  12. PL/SQL: If only metaprogramming was this simple.

    Comment by l0b0 — October 28, 2006 @ 10:33 am

  13. I REALLY enjoyed those !!

    Comment by Owen Cutajar — October 28, 2006 @ 11:06 am

  14. Six Word Stories – Programming Languages

    Trackback by Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot — October 28, 2006 @ 11:19 am

  15. The visual studio one is really for emacs.

    One Editor to rule them all, one Editor to C-x C-f them,
    One Editor to bring them all and to their keymaps bind them
    In the land of Emacs where the Sexprs lie.

    Comment by ed — October 28, 2006 @ 11:27 am

  16. More Haskell ones (from Reddit)

    vegai 9 points 5 hours ago*

    Brainstorming @ #haskell:

    vegai> Haskell: BDSM your way to the future!
    dons> Haskell: You know I’m smarter than you
    lispy> Haskell: Lambda Calculus in the type system!
    lispy> Haskell: Expected Int but Inferred IO Int
    sjanssen> from a grumpy Haskell newbie: MONADS?! Why can’t I do IO?
    int-e> Pure on the surface. unsafePerformIO inside. ?
    skew> In Haskell, typechecker works for YOU!
    vegai> Image is nothing. Types are everything.
    skew> vegai: how about “Type bondage blasé? Try being top.”

    Comment by jb — October 28, 2006 @ 12:06 pm

  17. ed @ 15 -

    It used to be about emacs. But, unfortunately, now it’s about VS :)

    Comment by jb — October 28, 2006 @ 12:08 pm

  18. Lisp:
    Understanding recursion requires first understanding recursion

    Comment by ben — October 28, 2006 @ 12:47 pm

  19. Haskell: first get yourself a PhD.

    Comment by Julian Morrison — October 28, 2006 @ 1:09 pm

  20. BASICA
    GOTO has ruined thousands of minds.

    Qbasic
    No users over 15 years old.

    Comment by kk — October 28, 2006 @ 3:36 pm

  21. Then assembler wrote:

    bow to me

    I am god

    Comment by cyber_rigger — October 28, 2006 @ 4:09 pm

  22. Assembler:
    Well-structured, powerful, fast. Pick any one

    Comment by jb — October 28, 2006 @ 4:14 pm

  23. XML:
    Hey guys! Can I tag along?

    OpenGL:
    I’d murder direct-x given the chance.

    C:
    Listen Son, When I was your age….

    Visual Studio:
    Just let me code for you.

    Comment by xamox — October 28, 2006 @ 4:25 pm

  24. no, guys, you didn’t understand thing about lisp..

    “Lisp is a programmable programming language.”

    - John Foderaro, CACM, September 1991

    Comment by killerstorm — October 28, 2006 @ 4:58 pm

  25. What’s with all the Lisp ones joking about recursion? Lisp has more looping constructs than any other language I know.

    I’ve written large programs in Lisp, and it doesn’t use recursion any more than any other language.

    Comment by aj — October 28, 2006 @ 5:42 pm

  26. The 50% of Lisp programmers who hate ‘loop’ will appreciate:

    (loop :now just type english here!)

    Comment by aj — October 28, 2006 @ 5:48 pm

  27. Postscript:
    parentheses stinkin’ need not. rules RPN!

    Comment by Ed — October 28, 2006 @ 6:34 pm

  28. Six-Word Stories About Programming Languages

    Inspired by a posting in Marginal Revolution which in turn was inspired by an article in Wired, John B. …

    Trackback by Global Nerdy — October 28, 2006 @ 7:00 pm

  29. More from Reddit: I like the Haskell one the best.

    sketerpot 1 point 23 minutes ago*

    C++: Templates can make infinite compiler loops.

    Lisp: I am alpha, omega, and lambda.

    TeX: I’m a pretty princess! With macros!

    LaTeX: I’ve heard every Latex joke. Repeatedly.

    Haskell: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

    Comment by jb — October 28, 2006 @ 7:38 pm

  30. Python: Five is better than six.

    Comment by tom — October 29, 2006 @ 1:33 am

  31. OR:

    Python: *Because* five is better than six.

    OR:

    I dunno. Guido’s busy. Where’s Tim?

    Comment by tom — October 29, 2006 @ 1:37 am

  32. Visual Basic .NET:

    “… will I ever be… like dad?”

    Comment by Fra — October 29, 2006 @ 11:19 am

  33. [...] October 29th, 2006 in Links More uber-short stories, this time they’re six word shorts about programming languages. [...]

    Pingback by warpedvisions.org » Blog Archive » Geeky six word shorts — October 30, 2006 @ 3:26 am

  34. VB: “Now abandoned. Keep MSDN. Never surrender.”

    Comment by BusyCortex — October 30, 2006 @ 8:59 am

  35. Assembler: Behind every good compiler there’s…me.

    Basic: I’ll keep you simple, stupid.

    Comment by Kram II — October 30, 2006 @ 10:03 am

  36. You’re in the army now, son.

    (Guess which language! I rather like it, even though I’m a CO)

    Comment by Harald Korneliussen — October 30, 2006 @ 11:23 am

  37. Select ME as Darklord from Underworld…

    Comment by Danielt — October 30, 2006 @ 11:44 am

  38. Assembler:
    I am one interpretator you cannot live without

    C:
    I understand Assembler well

    C++
    and I can talk to C much easily

    Comment by Vasudevan — October 30, 2006 @ 1:46 pm

  39. Delphi:if I only had that component…

    Comment by RSalazar — October 30, 2006 @ 2:25 pm

  40. Forth

    “In the beginning was the word.”

    Comment by Julian V. Noble — October 30, 2006 @ 3:20 pm

  41. Object COBOL
    Because true evil can never die.

    Comment by RuneLancer — October 30, 2006 @ 3:32 pm

  42. PL/1: Without me programmers make more money.

    Comment by Tony Miller — October 30, 2006 @ 7:05 pm

  43. C++:

    OO is my procedural, vice versa.

    Comment by Nelson — October 30, 2006 @ 8:22 pm

  44. C++:

    You newer dare not delete me!!!

    Comment by Nelson — October 30, 2006 @ 8:27 pm

  45. Perl:

    It’s called code for a reason.

    Comment by Helge — October 30, 2006 @ 8:45 pm

  46. Befunge:

    0"!siht ni rotide" v
    >v
    ,:"Try writing an "

    Comment by Helge — October 30, 2006 @ 8:55 pm

  47. Tk/Tcl

    Take two bottles into the shower?

    (answer: no, never did use these anyway but they were rather good if you could bear the needless syntactic differences to Perl.)

    Comment by Nigel F — October 30, 2006 @ 9:04 pm

  48. Tivoli:

    That endpoint logged in, right? … Crap.

    Comment by Larry Clapp — October 30, 2006 @ 9:40 pm

  49. SQL: I AM a computer language … NOT.

    Comment by Bill Westphal — October 30, 2006 @ 10:02 pm

  50. [...] Found this page on Wired. Seems like you can sum it all up in six words. Even the programming languages. [...]

    Pingback by Kirtan Desai’s Blog — October 31, 2006 @ 1:38 am

  51. C:
    #define 0 1 #define 1 0

    Comment by RTS — October 31, 2006 @ 2:54 am

  52. C:
    Pointers. memcpy(). POWER!!! … Damn, “Access Violation”.

    Comment by Mason Deaver — October 31, 2006 @ 2:56 am

  53. Hmmm

    Emacs: Once considered huge. Now there’s Eclipse.

    Eclipse: Good editor, but can’t read email.

    Nethack: Why do single characters cause fear?

    Comment by Greg — October 31, 2006 @ 3:44 am

  54. Julian V. Noble, shouldn’t that be…

    Forth: The word in the beginning was.

    Comment by Harald Korneliussen — October 31, 2006 @ 7:16 am

  55. .NET:

    It’s just like JDK … only different.

    Comment by Bill Westphal — October 31, 2006 @ 10:08 am

  56. Visual Studio:

    Just let me do it ok?

    Comment by dauchande — October 31, 2006 @ 2:26 pm

  57. PASCAL

    When first you learn to program…

    Comment by Daryll — October 31, 2006 @ 4:44 pm

  58. Assembler:
    All your code reduces to me.

    Comment by Mason Deaver — November 1, 2006 @ 12:03 am

  59. ASP:
    Because programmers are expendable these days.

    Comment by Stephen Paulger — November 1, 2006 @ 9:21 pm

  60. Perl:

    That subroutine has to be somewhere.

    Comment by Paul — November 1, 2006 @ 11:31 pm

  61. The FORTRAN story needs rewriting. The first fusion bomb design was developed in 1951 and set off in the Ivy Mike test in 1952: two years before FORTRAN was even conceived. In fact, some of the first calculations for the fusion bomb projects were run on the ENIAC, which had no programming language.

    Comment by D. Brantley — November 2, 2006 @ 2:23 pm

  62. D. Brantly @ 61

    Thanks. I’ve updated the story to reflect a more plausible plot scenario.

    Comment by jb — November 2, 2006 @ 2:29 pm

  63. [...] We are always proclaiming customer collaboration, but what about the language of programming languages? John Brothers has some fun with Six Word Stories about Programming Languages. [...]

    Pingback by Agile Executive » Blog Archive » Carnival of Agilists - 11/2/06 — November 2, 2006 @ 3:30 pm

  64. [...] Indefinite Articles » Six Word Stories about Programming Languages (tags: programming language) [...]

    Pingback by Technical Related Notes » Blog Archive » links for 2006-10-30 — November 4, 2006 @ 8:51 am

  65. Plankalkül: If and Then but no Else

    Plankalkül: A Nazi invented computer programming languages

    Plankalkül: O my shweet lord! Who new?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl

    Comment by Craig Shergold — November 4, 2006 @ 9:08 am

  66. [...]You’re in the army now, son.

    (Guess which language! I rather like it, even though I’m a CO) [...]

    My money’s on Ada, a rather nice language for parallel programming :)

    Comment by John Richter — November 5, 2006 @ 8:54 pm

  67. TeX: Silence! I know what I’m doing.

    Comment by Avani Wildani — November 6, 2006 @ 12:37 am

  68. Python: There can be only one. Really?

    Python: There can’t be any other way.

    Comment by Jan Hudec — November 7, 2006 @ 7:01 am

  69. 6 words stories

    Trackback by Kate Gregory's Blog — November 7, 2006 @ 11:27 am

  70. 6 word stories

    Trackback by Kate Gregory's Blog — November 7, 2006 @ 11:28 am

  71. ASP:
    Till U r With me?:)

    Comment by Hey Really Enjoy — November 24, 2006 @ 9:56 am

  72. MUMPS: No thanks, I’ve been vaccinated.

    Comment by M.J.Clark — December 5, 2006 @ 3:57 pm

  73. Logo: When turtles walked the world, drawing.

    REBOL: Everything is a dialect, isn’t it?

    AWK: First Perl, then others, began here.

    Jorf: A dancing donkey is our mascot.

    Euphoria: It’s all a sequence of atoms.

    Comment by Gregg Irwin — December 27, 2006 @ 9:04 pm

  74. not that it matters, but the lisp one shows an odd syntax (one that wouldnt probably occur in lisp).

    i love the phrase, but it should be smth like:

    (defconcepts (belong ‘us) :not smalltalk)

    haha…doesnt look too good for a blog post, but would be more acceptable.

    Comment by galo — January 3, 2007 @ 10:42 am

  75. Good one. Thanks!

    jb

    Comment by jb — January 3, 2007 @ 1:06 pm

  76. [...] The surge of traffic coming from my Six Word Stories post has led to a decent payout from HiddenMarket, which, in turn, allowed me to buy this: [...]

    Pingback by Indefinite Articles » Hidden Market Goodies — January 6, 2007 @ 4:35 pm

  77. VB.NET: C# for dummies
    VBScript: VB for dummies
    Cold Fusion: VBScript for dummies

    P.S. Visual Studio is software, not a language.

    But on that note:
    Visual Studio Design View: Front Page for programmers without web skills

    Comment by Matt — January 26, 2007 @ 9:57 pm

  78. Scheme :

    Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs ;-)

    Comment by vshenoy — April 21, 2007 @ 8:02 am

  79. [...] April 24th, 2007 in Links Six Word Stories about Programming Languages defines popular programming languages (and tools) in 6 words. [...]

    Pingback by warpedvisions.org » Blog Archive » Programming languages, in six words — April 24, 2007 @ 3:10 pm

  80. [...] [upmod] [downmod] Indefinite Articles » Six Word Stories about Programming Languages (undefined.com) 0 points posted 2 years, 6 months ago by SixSixSix tags imported cool saved [...]

    Pingback by Tagz | "Indefinite Articles » Six Word Stories about Programming Languages" | Comments — May 16, 2009 @ 4:55 pm

  81. Hexadecimal:
    4F 52 49 47 49 4E
    (or)
    Real Programmers Write In Raw Hex

    Comment by not an alien — August 25, 2009 @ 4:47 pm

  82. Java : I have a job because of this

    Comment by Ramdas — December 1, 2009 @ 8:25 am

  83. brainfuck:
    My name is self explanatory

    Comment by Charson — December 8, 2009 @ 6:14 am

  84. Six Word Stories about Programming Languages…

    …

    Trackback by Tumble upon johl — December 18, 2009 @ 6:12 pm

  85. Look on Ye Mighty and despair!

    Comment by Nergle — December 18, 2009 @ 8:47 pm

  86. I creased at C++. Too true.

    Comment by CJ — December 18, 2009 @ 11:07 pm

  87. SNOBOL

    nobody beats me for string matching

    Comment by nziring — December 19, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

  88. PL/1

    how many features can be supported?

    Comment by nziring — December 19, 2009 @ 3:37 pm

  89. Scala

    JVM can do that? who knew?

    Comment by nziring — December 19, 2009 @ 3:40 pm

  90. ugh, that one went wrong. let’s try again:

    RPL: «brain twisted if structure needed not»

    Comment by Matthias — December 21, 2009 @ 1:49 pm

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