Write only programming

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_conman.org>
Date: Thu Feb 28 22:44:26 2002

It was thus said that the Great John Chris Wren once stated:
>
> This is a personal tirade of mine. There is no such thing as a language
> that supports comments that can be considered write-only. There are
> write-only programmers, but personally, I can't think of a single language
> that doesn't support comments in one form or another. From using Forth with
> shadow files to the latest and greatest 5GL languages, they all support
> comments. Feel free to show an example of a language that doesn't support
> comments, it will be new to me.

  Then you haven't come across Befunge:

                 http://www.catseye.mb.ca/esoteric/befunge/

  Befunge98 *appears* to have a facility for comments, but given the nature
of the language, it could conceivably overwrite its own comments. Befunge93
(the first version) doesn't support comments at all.

> I've used ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL, Forth, C/C++, Java, Pascal, LOGO,
> Smalltalk, Perl, Python, Ruby, DBASE, BASIC, PL/1, PL/M, ADA, Modula, APL,
> Foxpro, SQL, and a few others that I can't even recall anymore. I've
> written assembler on PICs, 6502, 68xx, 68xxx, 8051, 1802s, 8080/Z80, 29030s,
> x86, Cyber 74, MSP430, TI DSPs, ADI DSPs, and about a dozen other
> processors. My personal experience says there is NO write-only language.

  Then you haven't seen BrainFuck:

                   http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/bf/

  And yes, you *can* get a compiler for BrainFuck. Why you would, is
another question.

  These are *almost* on topic here (both being around nine years old).

  -spc (And you thought INTERCAL was bad ... )
Received on Thu Feb 28 2002 - 22:44:26 GMT

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