Personally, I think it's not only quite funny, but a great way to get people involved and interested in perl who might have only glanced upon perl before.
Obufscated Haiku'd Perl
by
ukryule
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So to sum up this article, if you add this at the top of your Perl programs:
use Symbol::Approx::Sub;
use Coy;
Then not only will your Perl be even less decipherable than normal Perl code (wow!), but the errors you get from it will be hidden in lines of poetry! No self-respecting programmer would have it any other way...
Now, it's back to debugging my program for me:
-----
Two old men encounter
beside a pond. A swallow
flying. Two trout.
-----
Lao Tse's commentary...
Execution of./new.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
("The Way of Mysterious Compiler": line ???)
Decoded Geekcode from the article
by
Nevrar
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You didn't read the article. There are several Perl packages available that are related to LoTR: Date::Discordian, to print Discordian dates, Date::Tolkien::Shire, which does a 'today in history' for LoTR. Others are mentioned, but those are the ones specific to LoTR.
-- I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. -M.C. Escher (1898-1972)
While I think its probably irrelevant to point out that I've read the article, I don't suppose you could remind me of the link between Date::Discordian (something clearly inspired by the brilliance of the Illuminatus! trilogy) and LoTR? I know that Leviathon references LoTR as well, but is there something else?
I remember when I used to use Matlab, there was a funtion called "Why". It used to spit out these silly answers. It somehow made using Matlab slightly less tedious.
This is just like all the hidden easter eggs in programs written by most programmers. (The built in screen saver in some versions of Word does not count.)
Hey, I was fine with it at the score it was when I posted it.
--
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Totally misread the headline
by
cancrman
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I thought it said "The Lighter Side of CSPAN". What a strange/. topic....
-- The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Re:Totally misread the headline
by
sprayNwipe
·
· Score: 1
Me too... I was expecting some Dick Clark-hosted blooper-reel footage of when Strom Thurmond met with some animals and kids, but with hilarious and disasterous results!
She wore a PERL necklace
by
journalistguy
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps the author should get in touch with the wacky ophthalmologist responsible for this site and pick up a few tips on making indecipherable humor err...decipherable.
From seeing the trailer it looks like there might be a 1/2 decent movie to come out in 2001. Best I've see so far is Zoolander and that doesnt say much.
...if only to find a movie whose script fulfills the promise of its title.
Good Parts Version (TM)
by
PeterClark
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
It's way to late, and I should be in bed, but I thought I would c/p the relevant parts of the article for those at work tomorrow who find the site/.ed. Sorry that I didn't preserve the HTML formatting. The rest is amusing, too, so you might want to come back to it once the servers have recovered. (If you're the type of person who gets excited over perl modules, that is. The rest of you might just want to watch CSPAN.:)
:Peter
---
Moving swiftly on, we come to Date::Tolkien::Shire, a king amongst date modules. Most newspapers carry an ``on this day in history'' column -- where you find, for instance, that you were born on the same day as the man who invented chili-paste -- but no broadsheet will tell you what happened to Frodo and his valiant companions as they fought to free Middle Earth from the scourge of the Dark Lord. The undeceptively simple:
use Date::Tolkien::Shire;
print Date::Tolkien::Shire->new(time)->on_date, "\n";
outputs (well, output a few days ago):
Highday Winterfilth 30 7465
The four Hobbits arrive at the Brandywine Bridge in the dark, 1419.
What better task could there be for crontab but to run this in the wee hours and update/etc/motd for our later enjoyment. Implementing this is, as ever, left as an exercise for the interested reader.
There is a more useful side to Date::Tolkien::Shire or, at the very least, it does light the way for other modules. As well as the on_date() method it provides an overloaded interface to the dates it returns. This allows you to compare dates and times as if they were normal numbers, so that:
print 'time is '.( $date1 > $date2 ? 'later':'earlier' ).
"than time -1e6\n";
prints time is later than time -1e6, the more prosaic Date::Simple module provides a similar interface for real dates and ensures they stringify with ISO formatting.
Unfortunately, it turns out that he's like one of those annoying five-year-olds who thinks a joke gets funnier if you repeat it over and over again. He's been telling this joke for about 14 years now.
Re:I always thought...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
And the fact that people bothered to use perl at all was evidence that either a) people have too much time on their hands, or b) that a lot of people are intelectually bored that they need something to complex and convoluted to keep them occupied! But hey, more power to them, those bastards stuck at a "job."
Re:I always thought...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The synchronicity machine clicked, and the name of Eris adorned his prose. The author is one of us without any doubt. Funny I followed a Perl link, being a wannabe Pythonista and all that cal, but the Discordian reference made it all blissfully clear in a very obscure manner - the usual tool of the old girl, eh? All hail Discordia!
Does it really seem like a good idea to have our computers guessing about what we mean? To be honest, they're not smart enough for me to trust them with that kind of authority quite yet. Until my computer can actually construct a useful PERL routine and explain its reasoning to me, I don't really want it guessing which one I meant by my typo...
is it any better to have Microsoft guessing (or telling) us what we want? Actually computers already tend to guess what we mean on a regular basis. That's what spell/grammar checking does.
I can't believe the article did not mention ACME::Bleach which just bleaches your program. Run it once and your code magically disappears... but still runs!
ACME::Buffy is similar, except your program is turned into a Buffy mantra that can be chanted or executed.
In fact the whole ACME name space is reserved just for silly and incredibly useful modules.
-- Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
Re:More serious modules
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
It did mention this in the second paragraph:
Portions of this creative outpouring of humor often find their way onto the CPAN. There is even the special Acme::* name space set aside for these bizarre freaks so they do not interfere with the normal smooth running of that ever so special service.
So at least Acme:: was mentioned.
Re:More serious modules
by
johnhyland
·
· Score: 0
If you like ACME::Bleach, you should try ACME::Smirch. Wash all those messy alphanumerics right out of your code!
They missed another good one
by
Marcus+Brody
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
And who said that quantum computers a centurys away?? You can get started on your 386 right now, courtesy of CPAN!
Also, about that eliza chatbot: there is an easier way to get started (you may have seen this in this months linux journal, non?):
$ emacs
esc
shift-X
doctor
And there you go - a psychotherapist built right into your text editor. Perfect for those times when that fscking bug makes you want to give it all up...
Anyway, next time someone complains about MS bloatware being so cheeky that they included a flight sim in a version of Excel, I shall point this out!
Re:They missed another good one
by
scrutty
·
· Score: 1
$ emacs
esc
shift-X
doctor
you don't need the Shift. Just esc x doc (tab to autocomplete) will do.
Or use your meta key in place of esc, if you have one. Often mapped to L-alt on Linux distros.
-- --
Oh Well
Re:They missed another good one
by
Marcus+Brody
·
· Score: 1
thanks.
i'm actually a vi man myself, which explains my long route.
anyways, we dont want to get into that discussion do we....
must get round to learning emacs one of these days (im a nix begginer, see...), but vi suits my needs for now.
Marcus
Re:They missed another good one
by
susi
·
· Score: 1
And when the doctor has started, there's an extremely useful command in the namespace: M-x doctor-strangelove
On first glance....
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I thought that said "The Lighter Side of CSPAN." Boy, was I disappointed when I clicked on that!
Of *course* Perl is funny!
by
Linux+Freak
·
· Score: 2
I've known for a long time that Perl is a funny language. After all, its creator, "Larry Wall", definitely has a sense of humour.
...you might be better off investigating the Time::Human module by Simon Cozens. This creates person-friendly descriptions of a time, transforming the excessively precise 00:23:12.00 into a positively laid-back ``coming up to 25 past midnight.''
I've surfed around CPAN, google, and Simon Cozens' home page but can't find this module. Can anybody point me to it?
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think it's not only quite funny, but a great way to get people involved and interested in perl who might have only glanced upon perl before.
--NovaScorpio
Matt
That's real appropriate.
--NovaScorpio
Matt
Now, it's back to debugging my program for me:
There's a few syntax errors in that geekcode, but here's the decoded (valid) geekcode from the article
--
Nevrar
WTF does that article on some CPAN modules have to do with LoTR?
I remember when I used to use Matlab, there was a funtion called "Why". It used to spit out these silly answers. It somehow made using Matlab slightly less tedious.
This is just like all the hidden easter eggs in programs written by most programmers. (The built in screen saver in some versions of Word does not count.)
I thought it said "The Lighter Side of CSPAN". What a strange /. topic....
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Perhaps the author should get in touch with the wacky ophthalmologist responsible for this site and pick up a few tips on making indecipherable humor err...decipherable.
[Insert the usual disclaimer here]
From seeing the trailer it looks like there might be a 1/2 decent movie to come out in 2001. Best I've see so far is Zoolander and that doesnt say much.
It's way to late, and I should be in bed, but I thought I would c/p the relevant parts of the article for those at work tomorrow who find the site /.ed. Sorry that I didn't preserve the HTML formatting. The rest is amusing, too, so you might want to come back to it once the servers have recovered. (If you're the type of person who gets excited over perl modules, that is. The rest of you might just want to watch CSPAN. :)
:Peter
/etc/motd for our later enjoyment. Implementing this is, as ever, left as an exercise for the interested reader.
---
Moving swiftly on, we come to Date::Tolkien::Shire, a king amongst date modules. Most newspapers carry an ``on this day in history'' column -- where you find, for instance, that you were born on the same day as the man who invented chili-paste -- but no broadsheet will tell you what happened to Frodo and his valiant companions as they fought to free Middle Earth from the scourge of the Dark Lord. The undeceptively simple:
use Date::Tolkien::Shire;
print Date::Tolkien::Shire->new(time)->on_date, "\n";
outputs (well, output a few days ago):
Highday Winterfilth 30 7465
The four Hobbits arrive at the Brandywine Bridge in the dark, 1419.
What better task could there be for crontab but to run this in the wee hours and update
There is a more useful side to Date::Tolkien::Shire or, at the very least, it does light the way for other modules. As well as the on_date() method it provides an overloaded interface to the dates it returns. This allows you to compare dates and times as if they were normal numbers, so that:
$date1 = Date::Tolkien::Shire->new(time);
$date2 = Date::tolkien::Shire->new(time - 1e6);
print 'time is '.( $date1 > $date2 ? 'later':'earlier' ).
"than time -1e6\n";
prints time is later than time -1e6, the more prosaic Date::Simple module provides a similar interface for real dates and ensures they stringify with ISO formatting.
...that Perl itself was evidence that Larry Wall had a sense of humor.
The synchronicity machine clicked, and the name of Eris adorned his prose. The author is one of us without any doubt. Funny I followed a Perl link, being a wannabe Pythonista and all that cal, but the Discordian reference made it all blissfully clear in a very obscure manner - the usual tool of the old girl, eh? All hail Discordia!
Does it really seem like a good idea to have our computers guessing about what we mean? To be honest, they're not smart enough for me to trust them with that kind of authority quite yet. Until my computer can actually construct a useful PERL routine and explain its reasoning to me, I don't really want it guessing which one I meant by my typo...
"Doctor who?" --The Doctor
I can't believe the article did not mention ACME::Bleach which just bleaches your program. Run it once and your code magically disappears... but still runs!
ACME::Buffy is similar, except your program is turned into a Buffy mantra that can be chanted or executed.
In fact the whole ACME name space is reserved just for silly and incredibly useful modules.
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
Quantum::Entaglement
And who said that quantum computers a centurys away?? You can get started on your 386 right now, courtesy of CPAN!
Also, about that eliza chatbot: there is an easier way to get started (you may have seen this in this months linux journal, non?):
$ emacs
esc
shift-X
doctor
And there you go - a psychotherapist built right into your text editor. Perfect for those times when that fscking bug makes you want to give it all up...
Anyway, next time someone complains about MS bloatware being so cheeky that they included a flight sim in a version of Excel, I shall point this out!
I thought that said "The Lighter Side of CSPAN." Boy, was I disappointed when I clicked on that!
I've known for a long time that Perl is a funny language. After all, its creator, "Larry Wall", definitely has a sense of humour.
The proof of this, of course, is right here, and here.
___
Cognitive Overflow
more than yo
Perl, It's my new obsession
Perl!~/\?/
Perls on the neck of your lover
'coz Perl gives you stuff to discover
Perl at the bin in my /usr
- you could be my dromedaryPerl, cos you are no luser
Perl, it's the coding with passion
cos() today it just goes with the Slashdot
'coz Perl is a lingo so scary
Perl likes its vars with the dollar
it's curled but you don't ever tell 'er, yeah I want to be your regex
I wanna doc you in latex
Perl on the screens that we key on
Perl, do I hate that one python, yeah
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I think I speak for all of us when I say fuck off.