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A Warrior's Programming Language
BlackNova writes "Var'aq is "a speculative glance at what a programming language on a Klingon computer system would look like." Make sure to read the Preliminary Specification and the Proposed Extensions."
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If you're into esoteric languages, the reference page is the Cat's Eyes page.
When I saw this two or three weeks ago at first I was kind of excited about it... the last link I followed implied that it was a finished language. I thought that was hysterical, a programming language written in Klingon! How nerdy can you get.
But it's not. I found it rather dull, it's just a little mini-essay about what such a programming language might be like, and what it might be called. I found the whole thing very thin at the time. Of course, the guy might have done some work on it since I last saw it, I haven't followed the link yet.
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RumorsDaily
I also like Unlambda, but Brainf*** is my language of choice.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Maybe Slashdot should have a system that automatically mirrors pages before a link is submitted in a story.
Isn't it rather pointless for slashdot to post a geocities link?
They have one of the few "slashdot effect defense systems" that actually works. It goes something like this:
The web site you are trying to access has exceeded its allocated data transfer.
And puhleeese don't try to tell me a link to the Google cache is an acceptable mirror. It's not. Maybe if it altered all of the links to *also* point to the google cache it would amost be acceptable. I have a feeling the nice google people don't do that for exactly that reason -- they don't wanna be a free mirror whore.
"News for Nerds"? Any "nerd" who still uses geocities....
"Stuff that Matters"? If it's hosted on geocities, it probably doesn't matter. If it mattered, it would be hosted somewhere where everybody could see it on a consistent basis!
That thanks to Okuda's refusal to define or use a consistent mapping between Klingon characters and sounds, which makes no sense whatsoever, we're stuck with piqaD for I/O.
* I heard something about a "Klingon Forth". Is this it? And why isn't it called loSDIch?
Yes, in a way. It's a stack-based RPN language like Forth or PostScript; the reason for this has nothing to do with an original desire to emulate one of those languages, but simply the unusual object-verb-subject syntax of Klingon. This sort of dictated the required form of the language right up front, ruling out a more traditional ALGOL-like syntax (based on English). Stack-based languages are actually easier to parse anyway, especially in Perl: just chomp and process. It is also an impure functional language in the same vein as Lisp or ML; it supports local variables, but it is really intended to do everything off the stack.
As for calling it loSDIch (Klingon for fourth), that would be an obvious joke title to anyone who actually spoke Klingon; this being at least a semi-serious exercise in artificial culture development, such a title would be noticeably silly at best. var'aq is actually completely meaningless, though it suggests identification with a famous Klingon mathematician or computer scientist in sort of the same way as Pascal recalls Blaise Pascal or Ada recalls Ada Lovelace. In any case, the name var'aq came before the form of the language. (In any case, var'aq is based more directly on PostScript anyway. But they're all part of the same family.)
[...]
In terms of genetics, var'aq is the bastard child of a back-room tryst between PostScript and Lisp after a Star Trek convention.
[...]
* Why doesn't this construct translate to its PostScript/Forth equivalent?
The question is one of verisimilitude. The likelihood of a Klingon concept being an exact translation of its English equivalent isn't always good. Consequently, pure translation of an Earth language might make for a cute joke, but it would sacrifice plausibility. A prime example is the qaw/qawHa' instructions, which perform the same function as PostScript's mark/cleartomark instructions but literally translate to remember/forget; the idea is that the metaphor chosen in Klingon might more reflect the purpose of marking the stack than the actual act. Incidentally, It's quite true that many of the idioms chosen for var'aq are anything but obvious. This is the reason why; though mathematics is considered universal, it's not too likely that everything would be described in the same way. (That said, I did cheat in a few places; for example, the word for logarithm is a direct translation from the Greek logarithmos, meaning roughly "logic-number".)
For a rather thorough and creative discussion on the issues involved in translation, you might wish to look at Le ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter (the author of the hacker classic Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid), an intricate and well-written look at the pitfalls of translation between languages.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It is a bit pointless by Geocities to shut down the page due to "exceeded data transfer quota" since the "temporarily unavailable" page in this case is three times bigger...
The guy who made var'aq is this guy I knew in college. He's a fascinating fellow--only he could create something like var'aq.
Anyhow, the interesting thing about var'aq is that because it runs on Perl, it's pretty ubiquitous meaning that if you really hate your job and feel the need for revenge, just go rewrite the production administration scripts in var'aq and then quit.