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Interview With Author of the First Spoof Language

Posted by Soulskill on from the spoof-language-real-beard dept.

An anonymous reader brings us Computerworld's interview with Don Woods, one of the creators of Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym (INTERCAL). INTERCAL and its documentation were created in 1972 as a parody of that era's languages and instruction manuals. Among other things, Woods had this to say: "We designed the language without too much trouble. Writing the manual took a while, especially for things like the circuit diagrams we included as nonsensical illustrations. The compiler itself actually wasn't too much trouble, given that we weren't at all concerned with optimising the performance of either the compiler or the compiled code. I admit I'm surprised at its longevity. Some of the jokes in the original work feel rather dated at this point. It helps that the language provides a place where people can discuss oddball features missing from other languages, such as the 'COME FROM' statement and operators that work in base 3."

3 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. COME FROM revival by listen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you hunker down and squint at it the right way, COME FROM is really an early form of aspect oriented programming - non local transfer of control to the point of definition - yeah, yeah CLOS fans we know that real generic functions subsume AOP and date from the mists of the 80s - but this is from the early 70s so it is pretty interesting. Over application of hyped technologies for the win!

  2. Special hardware support for INTERCAL! by Mr+Z · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Interestingly, TI's C64x family of DSPs has special instructions that speed up INTERCAL. The "SHFL" instruction directly implements INTERCAL's "mingle" operator. The "DEAL" instruction implements common special cases of the "select" operator. Nifty, eh?

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    Program Intellivision!
  3. Real Challenge... by stuffman64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about instead of the Obfuscated C Code contest, we have an Unobfuscated INTERCAL Code contest where the object is to make INTERCAL code look as close to or at least as understandable as "normal" C (or other language) as possible while still performing a set action?

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    --- At my sig, unleash hell.