• (cs) in reply to DropDeadThread
    DropDeadThread:
    whilst thee_value dominate not twenty_and_five
  procure thine data thusly
shouldst thou faileth thine task
  announce 'hear ye, hear ye!' 
return from whence you came

    Y'know...this might interest you.

    And yes, this is definitely in the running as greatest post of all time.

  • DrGuz (unregistered) in reply to Outlaw Programmer
    Outlaw Programmer:
    This story makes much more sense when you realize that Charles I.'s coworker wears a top hat, monocle and handlebar mustache!

    I say, vengeance is served! See this fellow get his comeuppance in today's Dinosaur Comic.

  • George (unregistered) in reply to A Brit
    A Brit:
    To be honest being British, these americanisms in programming languages are very annoying. I hate having to spell colour for example, the american way without the u. C# is full of them in the System namespace such as changing all the S's to Z's (like in Globalisation)

    Let's be objective for a moment. As much as the world is right to despise America and Americans, for they are very stupid and do smell bad, American spellings make a lot more sense than English spellings. Americans formalized spelling first, the English added their pointless bastardizations later.

    Just one thing, it's ZED you morons, not ZEE.

  • (cs) in reply to clively
    clively:
    DropDeadThread:
    whilst thee_value dominate not twenty_and_five
  procure thine data thusly
shouldst thou faileth thine task
  announce 'hear ye, hear ye!' 
return from whence you came

    Simply Beautiful.

    Quite, except of course for the magic number, inconsistent use of 'thou' and 'you' and the likely infinite loop. ;-)

    PS: seriously, DropDeadThread's post is one for the books...

  • schnitzi (unregistered) in reply to Pink Duck

    I recently moved to Australia, and was soon struck by all the uses of "whilst" instead of "while", particularly on government forms, safety signs, etc. So I looked into it a bit.

    There's actually a semi-sensible reason why it's done. It turns out, that in some obscure backwater of the Commonwealth (northern England, IIRC), the term "while" is used to mean "until".

    So you can imagine the possible confusion. For instance, on the trams here, there are signs that read "Do not talk to the driver whilst the tram is moving". Imagine that with an "until".

  • FlenchFlies (unregistered)

    True story: worked for a French company and, them being French, they didn't want to program in the barbaric language that English is:

    #define si if #define sinon else #define alors while #define retour return

    shudder

  • German B. (unregistered) in reply to Not an English Major
    Not an English Major:
    I just want to know who's responsible for this mess -

    tough though through trough

    Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :(

  • Richard Sargent (unregistered) in reply to German B.

    [quote user="German B]Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :([/quote]

    Let's not forget wound versus wound and wind versus wind!

  • Mitch (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    With you on that. And after spelling it the American way so many times, I start to use color in conversation...

  • (cs)

    For XMLHttpRequest responses, function... { return fromWhenceItCame }

  • MC (unregistered) in reply to A Brit
    A Brit:
    To be honest being British, these americanisms in programming languages are very annoying. I hate having to spell colour for example, the american way without the u. C# is full of them in the System namespace such as changing all the S's to Z's (like in Globalisation)

    Come up with a programming language in the UK that the world wants to use, and you can use whatever spelling you want.

  • Jim Steichen (unregistered) in reply to streetpc

    Just wanted to check out that you gnarly dudes are using the latest and greatest software technology fer yer rad code to make it easy for the dudes who have to read it. The hip new way to write readable C code involves the use of a few simple defines.

    #define like { #define man ;} #define an ; #define SayBro /* #define CheckItOut */

    SayBro like, this is some rad program, so CheckItOut

    like a = b an c = d man

    SayBro , like who needs help from them compiler choads anyway? THIS is the way to write CLEAR code. I mean really! CheckItOut

    like SayBro this is ShellSort straight out of the white book, but in a readable form.

    CheckItOut man

    #define YoDude for( #define OK ) #define is = #define AND && #define as #define Do #define long #define some #define make #define garbage #define FAROUT

    shell(v, n) SayBro sort v[0]...v[n-1] into increasing order CheckItOut int v[], n;

    like int gap, i, j, temp;

    YoDude gap is n/2 an as long as gap > 0 Do some garbage an make gap /=2 OK YoDude i is gap an as long as i < n Do some garbage an make i++ OK YoDude j is i - gap an as long as j >= 0 AND v[j] > v[j+gap] Do some garbage an make j -= gap OK like temp is v[j] an v[j] is v[j+gap] an v[j+gap] is temp man FAROUT man

    Found at: http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~omri/Humor/verbose-c.html

  • Dgvid (unregistered) in reply to A Brit
    A Brit:
    I hate having to spell colour for example, the american way without the u.
    To be fair, the differences in spelling are due to an honest attempt to modernize and improve the spelling of English words. The u in colour is quite unnecessary. Don't even get me started on draught vs. draft. Spell it that way...you might as well be speaking German!
  • SomeGuy (unregistered) in reply to German B.
    German B.:
    Not an English Major:
    I just want to know who's responsible for this mess -

    tough though through trough

    Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :(

    width, height and lots of others ended in th or ht. it still confuses me sometimes

    O/T: the real wtf is the forum software, the text area to post is 2 colums by 20 rows ahhhh

  • Shinobu (unregistered) in reply to Lewis Carroll
    Lewis Carroll:
    And hast thou slain the jabberfuck?
    Hentai alert.
  • (cs) in reply to Arlie
    Arlie:
    When I'm in the UK, I don't whine about having to see "colour" everywhere.

    I remember in the Trumpet Winsock (what you used to get on the Internet with Windows 3.1) help there was a mention about the spellings in its program: Things like "dialler". Trumpet is an Australian company. So obviously people were whining at them about their spelling.

    But IIRC the Windows 95 version of the software they went to the dark side and spelt things in the American way. (But by then Microsoft took all their market share by including TCP/IP in Windows)

  • Freddy (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    To be honest, as an American, these briticisms in weights and measures are very annoying. I hate having to measure in pounds, for example, the british way. And feet and inches. Egad! Our construction sites are overloaded with fractions.

    Sorry, just funnin'. :)

    Thank the Lord, however, that we don't weigh things in stones.

  • Marcus (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    No good Technial Authors know the meaning of Elegant Fallacy.

    We know that you have to call a spade a spade and never refer to it as an entreching tool.

    Therefore to cope with those who do not have English as their first language we would never use Whilst as While isperfectly acceptable.

    Marcus

  • Anonononymous (unregistered) in reply to George
    George:
    Just one thing, it's ZED you morons, not ZEE.

    Why would it be ZED? Zee fits in the scheme with Bee, See, Dee, Gee... Why should the last letter of the alphabet get its own pronunciation scheme? If you wanted to call it Zay, that would be fine, or Ez. Zed just doesn't work.

  • Brooks (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    Back when I was first learning to program, I found the British spellings quite useful when I wanted to name a variable "color" and the language already had color as a keyword. I just named it "colour" and the compiler was quite happy.

  • (cs) in reply to George
    George:
    Just one thing, it's ZED you morons, not ZEE.
    As an American, I was very annoyed with the latest Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie pronouncing "ZZ9 Plural-Z Alpha" with "zee"s instead of "zed"s.

    Even if people here DO use "zee", the Hitchhiker's characters are British! They wouldn't use "zee", they'd use "zed"! (Reference the radio or BBC series if you don't believe me.)

    They also crippled the discussion between Dent and Prosser about the notice in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in the back of a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard" (one of the best snippets of the book/radio/BBC) and removed the line "this is obviously some new use of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of."

  • - (unregistered)

    Microsoft decided that the scripting language in Excel/Word (VBA?) should be translated to Norwegian (this was the version before Office 95 I think). This was probably the most stupid decision they have ever made, and everyone just hated it. MS quietly changed it back to English the next release.

  • (cs) in reply to German B.
    German B.:
    Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :(

    It was many years before I realized draught has an F sound in it. WhereTF does the F come from?

    And I am Canadian.

  • (cs) in reply to ShawnD
    ShawnD:
    German B.:
    Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :(

    It was many years before I realized draught has an F sound in it. WhereTF does the F come from?

    And I am Canadian.

    Anglo-Saxon or Middle English. Not sure which.

    And you are excused.

  • (cs) in reply to George
    George:
    A Brit:
    To be honest being British, these americanisms in programming languages are very annoying. I hate having to spell colour for example, the american way without the u. C# is full of them in the System namespace such as changing all the S's to Z's (like in Globalisation)

    Let's be objective for a moment. As much as the world is right to despise America and Americans, for they are very stupid and do smell bad, American spellings make a lot more sense than English spellings. Americans formalized spelling first, the English added their pointless bastardizations later.

    Just one thing, it's ZED you morons, not ZEE.

    Smell bad?

    You're talking about the cuntry that invented vaginal deoderants, for Fuck's sake.

    Addendum (2008-01-26 19:41): Oops, sorry. Omitted the 'u'.

  • The Dane (unregistered) in reply to A Yank
    A Yank:
    ... "medarbejder" is danish for co-worker.
    Actually, "medarbejder" is Danish for employee.
  • SlyEcho (unregistered) in reply to A Brit
    A Brit:
    To be honest being British, these americanisms in programming languages are very annoying. I hate having to spell colour for example, the american way without the u. C# is full of them in the System namespace such as changing all the S's to Z's (like in Globalisation)
    using Colour = System.Drawing.Color;
using Globalisation = System.Globalization;

    Not quite as flexible as the C preprocessor, but it works.

  • Nick (unregistered)

    If they want more elegance in a language, use INTERCAL. You have to say PLEASE a lot, or else the compile will fail because 'Programmer is insufficiently polite'.

    Also, no dirty GOTO's in INTERCAL. They use COME FROM instead. Much more elegant.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonononymous
    Anonononymous:
    There are other differences in vocabulary, slang and accent, but nothing major enough to call them distinct languages.

    What do you do with same words having different meanings? e.g. gas (US) vs. petrol (UK). Whereas gas in the UK stands for natural gas.

    And there are Americans who won't know what a tyre is. You know, this circular, inflatable device Americans spell tire. :)

  • JimM (unregistered) in reply to German B.
    German B.:
    Not an English Major:
    I just want to know who's responsible for this mess -

    tough though through trough

    Add 'thorough' to complete the English learner nightmare list. Or are there more? :(

    Plough

    and I think there might be one more - the number seven rings a bell for the -ough construct

  • JimM (unregistered) in reply to GregM
    GregM:
    Don't forget the classics unless() and until()

    #define unless(x) if(!(x)) #define until(x) while(!(x))

    Actually, I find the 

    until(x) { }
    and 
    do { ... } until (x)
    constructs useful for certain tests that involve multiple comparisons. I once had to correct my tutor's code because he'd got his || and && mixed up in a while statement.

    On the other hand, it has to be VBScript for the win with the charming

    while condition
     statements...
[bold]wend[/bold]

    construction...

    CAPTCHA: validus. Yes, yes, I'm validating already...

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    I'm also reminded of my favorite entry I've seen to the IOCCC. It starts out with a whole ton of #defines for keywords that look like BASIC or Pascal, then a program written in them. Basically the the body of the program loos like it was written in Pascal, with some extra semicolons and other places the syntax isn't quite right.

    http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2000/primenum.c

  • JD (unregistered)

    #define clever dumbAss

  • (cs) in reply to Not a Brit (but a Canadian)
    Not a Brit (but a Canadian):
    I understand what that's like, but that's often a library thing. I develop extensively with Ogre3D, which is maintained by non-US folks, so they use Colour. As a Canadian, I use 'our' too, but when programming I snap into a US spelling mindset. I often find myself mixing up the two regardless.

    Now, if a language introduced a keyword like "neighbour", that'd probably rile up a bunch of folks.

    I'm Canadian, but I prefer the American spelling of things...

    Addendum (2008-01-28 10:46):

    FlenchFlies:
    True story: worked for a French company and, them being French, they didn't want to program in the barbaric language that English is:

    #define si if #define sinon else #define alors while #define retour return

    shudder

    shudder

  • ChessKnught (unregistered)

    ROFL...

    I worked with this guy who used to do something similar. The company we worked for had the coding policy of always using "the" in front of it's variable names, such as "theForm", "theData", "theHeaderStruct", etc... well, he didn't want to do that so instead, he decided that the German version would be better... he coded everything as "daForm", "daData", "daHeaderStruct"... drove everybody nuts.

  • Fnord (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw

    This contractor made a feeble attempt at 'job security'. As a contractor, I understand the need for an extension from time to time, but it is best to employ multiple overlapping methods of 'job security' to make yourself invaluable to the company. Now, had the changes to the header file been promoted to all other developers' machines but not to production, this would have been much more effective because then all of the other developers would have been scratching their heads while the contractor would have known the 30 second fix.

  • Rev. Spaminator (unregistered)

    This sounds similar to the Pirate Speak perl module. But everyone knows that is only meant for fun.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to ShawnD
    ShawnD:
    It was many years before I realized draught has an F sound in it.

    Riddle: What causes a cold, cures a cold, can be used to pay the doctor for the cure, and is used to replace the Army doctor?

    Answer: A draught.

    A riddle from the play, "Our American Cousin". (The play Abraham Lincoln was attending when he was assassinated.) (I don't remember the exact words but that was the gist of it.)

  • Eric (unregistered) in reply to me too

    I'm only a dumb English major, but even I figured out why it compiled on the contractor's system before the end of the story.

    Where are all the Tech Writers? I'm sure there are plenty of examples of inelegant syntax, grammar, and spelling errors in documentation written by engineers.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to me too

    The contractor seems to have embiggened his role with a less than cromulent performance.

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to jim

    I used the word "Kibosh" in a bug report once and got scolded at triage

  • Self Aware (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    I've always wondered how non-English speakers interpret English programming constructs.

    Maybe we should just use the whitespace programming language?

  • dp (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    Perhaps you should contract a British company to develop your programming language of choice, eh?

  • Alan (unregistered)

    I used to use an in-house language that had a catch ... caught ... endcatch construct. But it also accepted the spelling catch ... catched ... endcatch Allegedly this was to make life easier for the Germans.

  • Volatile (unregistered) in reply to me too

    whye?

  • Volatile (unregistered) in reply to Volatile
    Volatile:
    whye?
    ehm... s/.*// Anyway, cute code... :)
  • urtext (unregistered)

    The word choice makes more sense when you realize that Charles I died in 1649.

  • getAccess (unregistered)

    I can almost imagine how programming languages will go if Shakespeare pioneered it... LOL

  • (cs) in reply to Self Aware
    Self Aware:
    I've always wondered how non-English speakers interpret English programming constructs.
    As code.

    Addendum (2008-01-30 11:01):

    Self Aware:
    I've always wondered how non-English speakers interpret English programming constructs.
    As code.

    Edit:

    (No, seriously. It really is a sort of code that you need to learn in order to communicate what you want.

    Possibly, a good thing about this is that you don't have to think about separating the everyday and the programming-specific definitions of, say, "OR". I suppose.)

  • Annie (unregistered) in reply to A Brit

    Speaking of american-centric programming constructs, I once insisted that 'comments shall be in the English language' be included in a style guide, after reading a whole lot of code commented in French (and yes, this was code written in Redwood City, CA). HPL is Hindi centric. कार्य खाली मुख्य ( ) लिखें "Hello World!" खत्म कार्य The language, intended to teach non English speaking Indians basic programming, uses reserved words in Hindi. I remind our complaining British friend that localizing keywords is a two way street. Angrezi Hatao!

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