• Cornflowerblue (unregistered)

    "Thanks, but I know when to stop before we create a monster."

    I have yet to meet a human being able to pronounce such sentence.

    Besides, what they have is already sort of a, well, malevolent entity. Not a Godzilla yet, but certainly something along the lines of a Mogwai fed after midnight.

  • (cs)
    The Modesto Biology Institute kept its funding, and Lisa works there to this day.
    Found the WTF.
  • RFox (unregistered)

    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN"

    • C.A.R. Hoare

    Whew it's 2014 -- and yes I paid my Fortran dues.

  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to RFox
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

  • (cs) in reply to amomynous
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    The language of 2035 will be called RealScript with a syntax relatively close to English and will still require developers because of the few remaining native speakers who understand grammar or logic.

  • Tony (unregistered) in reply to Cornflowerblue
    Cornflowerblue:
    "Thanks, but I know when to stop before we create a monster."

    I have yet to meet a human being able to pronounce such sentence.

    Besides, what they have is already sort of a, well, malevolent entity. Not a Godzilla yet, but certainly something along the lines of a Mogwai fed after midnight.

    Heh. We have a system at work called Gremlin. It's replacement is, naturally, called Mogwai.

  • d'oh (unregistered)

    did they get married?

  • someone else (unregistered)

    I think I'll skip the Erik Gern wall-of-inflated-story-ultimately-leading-to-a-fairly-minor-wtf article today. Please let me know if it's actually worth reading.

  • not really an old guy (unregistered) in reply to amomynous

    Silly kids. Today in 2014, the web has been here for 25 years, and the Internet over 45. C is circa 1970, Cobol, earlier, Fortran about the same. Pascal, PL/1 and Ada have gone to pasture. But anything since 1990: C++, PHP, Perl, Java, Javascript. Python are in their late teens to 20 something now... so what makes you think in another 21 years, they won't be here? Once written no good program dies. I cite y2k as a good example. The next one will be when 32-bit time rolls over about 2038.

  • (cs) in reply to someone else
    someone else:
    I think I'll skip the Erik Gern wall-of-inflated-story-ultimately-leading-to-a-fairly-minor-wtf article today. Please let me know if it's actually worth reading.

    I don't think so. I read the first twoish paras and the last two, then headed to the comments, which would be guaranteed to be more interesting and better-written.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    So are discourse pages coming up completely blank for anyone else? It seems to be a problem with using Mozilla Seamonkey as a browser. There's a bunch of data when I show source, but it doesn't display anything. (If it matters, I am not logged in, not that I could since nothing displays.)

    Wow, such a high-tech forum software. More WTFs per square inch than CS ever had.

    Just for the hell of it, I tried it from an old OSX 10.5 PPC system I have. It says my browser is too old and wants me to go to browserhappy.com. Way to go guys, browser ageism, too lazy to have a fallback to even allow some kind of view-only with older browsers. Now that's a real WTF.

    But, hey, at least 4chan is cool enough to work with SeaMonkey 2.0.14 from 2011. (Yep, THREE YEARS OLD, I didn't realize it was that new.)

  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to not really an old guy
    not really an old guy:
    Silly kids. Today in 2014, the web has been here for 25 years, and the Internet over 45. C is circa 1970, Cobol, earlier, Fortran about the same. Pascal, PL/1 and Ada have gone to pasture. But anything since 1990: C++, PHP, Perl, Java, Javascript. Python are in their late teens to 20 something now... so what makes you think in another 21 years, they won't be here? Once written no good program dies. I cite y2k as a good example. The next one will be when 32-bit time rolls over about 2038.
    Never said they won't be here. Python, Java and C# will be middle-aged at most, only they won't be "language of the year", the one that gets brand new projects developed on. They'll be Cobol by then.
  • Frosh (unregistered)

    I skipped the author and went straight into the story. As soon as I saw the contrived structure with section headers and tenuous theme, I said, "This is another Erik Gern story." I scrolled up, and wouldn't you know it?

  • Smug Unix User (unregistered)

    The WTF was not writing a Python to Fortran converter like maybe: F2PY?

    Double the funding, double the fun.

  • QJo (unregistered)

    TRWTF is no newline characters between the invocations of System.out.println, making it difficult to read the structure of what it's writing out, amirite?

  • QJo (unregistered)

    I did use FORTRAN to write a C to COBOL converter once, do I win a prize?

  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to Smug Unix User
    Smug Unix User:
    The WTF was not writing a Python to Fortran converter like maybe: F2PY?

    Double the funding, double the fun.

    Why Python? It was written in Java. Personally, I thought she was going to create a Fortran bootstrap for the Java code. I'd do that.

  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    TRWTF is no newline characters between the invocations of System.out.println, making it difficult to read the structure of what it's writing out, amirite?
    No, because 'println' already includes a newline at the end of the line. If you add one, there will be a blank line after each text line. 'print' does not add newlines.
  • Josh (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    The language of 2035 will be called RealScript with a syntax relatively close to English and will still require developers because of the few remaining native speakers who understand grammar or logic.

    Welcome to Costco. I love you.

  • toppo (unregistered) in reply to amomynous
    amomynous:
    QJo:
    TRWTF is no newline characters between the invocations of System.out.println, making it difficult to read the structure of what it's writing out, amirite?
    No, because 'println' already includes a newline at the end of the line. If you add one, there will be a blank line after each text line. 'print' does not add newlines.
    You're an idiot. He means lines & spacing between the actual commands, not in the text being println'd. You know, to make the source code actually readable...?
  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to toppo
    toppo:
    amomynous:
    QJo:
    TRWTF is no newline characters between the invocations of System.out.println, making it difficult to read the structure of what it's writing out, amirite?
    No, because 'println' already includes a newline at the end of the line. If you add one, there will be a blank line after each text line. 'print' does not add newlines.
    You're an idiot. He means lines & spacing between the actual commands, not in the text being println'd. You know, to make the source code actually readable...?
    Call me hasty, I haven't even realized that there were multiple statements on a line. For me, just an horrid HTML output using stdout, no need to read after the first couple dozen characters.
  • n9ds (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    The language of 2035 will be called RealScript with a syntax relatively close to English and will still require developers because of the few remaining native speakers who understand grammar or logic.

    Or very few that can speak in fll wrds & frazes & nt in txt spk 4 a jawb u no.

  • golddog (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    The language of 2035 will be called RealScript with a syntax relatively close to Mandarin and will still require developers because of the few remaining native speakers who understand grammar or logic.

    FYP

  • (cs)

    The FORTRAN requirement in the grant application sounds like the infamous brown M&M concert rider clause.

    Either that, or the grant has boilerplate that hasn't been updated since 1978 or so.

  • EnterpriseIdiot (unregistered)

    TRWTF was the grant stipulating that the application required a minimum number of classes.

    public class S public class Sy extends S public class Sys extends Sy ...

    public class SystemDotOutDotPrintLnParenthesesQuoteHelloWorldAmIOneHundredClassesYetSoICanGetMyGrantMoneyQuoteParenthesesSemiColon extends SystemDotOutDotPrintLnParenthesesQuoteHelloWorldAmIOneHundredClassesYetSoICanGetMyGrantMoneyQuoteParenthesesSemiColo{ public static void main(String ... args){ System.out.println("Hello World"); } }

    Yay, I wrote a major application.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Non-programmer produces code that is crap. And this is a surprise?

    Scientific software is either written by scientists that can't program or programmers that don't know science.

    My post-doc adviser had created a monstrous Access application where one of the more interesting features was if you wanted to save you had to click a button (that didn't say save) and then answer "no" to a dialog that was completely unrelated to saving and then "yes" to the next dialog that IIRC might have actually alluded to the fact that this would save your work. He didn't think this was a problem because he knew how it worked.

  • (cs)

    Fortran? I scripted a web site in DCL about 6 years ago. I knew it would be 100% unportable, but the point was to get it running for the short term.

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Josh
    Josh:
    Shoreline:
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    The language of 2035 will be called RealScript with a syntax relatively close to English and will still require developers because of the few remaining native speakers who understand grammar or logic.

    Welcome to Costco. I love you.

    Man, I could really go for a Starbucks, y'know?

  • Chelloveck (unregistered)
    "There have to be at least 100 defined classes," Howard said, pointing out a stipulation in a grant application. "Otherwise the interface can't be considered a 'major research appliance.'"

    Translation: The grant doesn't actually stipulate anything about software. However, there is a clause where it will cover the costs of 'major research appliances', the definition of which includes, among many other things, software libraries containing 100 or more classes. If we can inflate our code to have 100 classes we can bill the grantors for the code. Come on, try harder, you can make "hello, world" have 100 classes.

    "Apparently they'll double our funding if all of our software ran on FORTRAN."

    Specifically, if we make use of the Foobar FORTRAN compiler, which is owned by a subsidiary of our grantor who'd really like to boost their prestige by including "used by Modesto Biology Institute to code a major research appliance" in their marketing materials. And don't forget to make sure that FORTRAN code contains at least 100 classes!

  • Wayne West (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    I did use FORTRAN to write a C to COBOL converter once, do I win a prize?

    I once wrote an Access program where I could save jokes in a text field and it would generate HTML pages with navigation. Worked like a champ.

  • Wayne West (unregistered)

    I ran in to a similar environment when I interviewed with a genetic testing lab. Their base system was in MySQL and they had hundreds of tables, I don't know the number. All of their base data went in to a central table, but whenever they wanted to do analysis of a subset, they'd spawn a copy. I was really looking forward to working with this as I love ETL challenges, but I didn't get the position: they were affiliated with a university and could get grad students working for free, so I'll bet it became a much bigger mess before it improved.

    Yeah, much better getting free work than paying someone with 20+ years doing what we need done.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Wayne West
    Wayne West:
    I ran in to a similar environment when I interviewed with a genetic testing lab. Their base system was in MySQL and they had hundreds of tables, I don't know the number. All of their base data went in to a central table, but whenever they wanted to do analysis of a subset, they'd spawn a copy. I was really looking forward to working with this as I love ETL challenges, but I didn't get the position: they were affiliated with a university and could get grad students working for free, so I'll bet it became a much bigger mess before it improved.

    Yeah, much better getting free work than paying someone with 20+ years doing what we need done.

    "grad students working for free ..." TRWTF^n

  • (cs) in reply to someone else
    someone else:
    I think I'll skip the Erik Gern wall-of-inflated-story-ultimately-leading-to-a-fairly-minor-wtf article today. Please let me know if it's actually worth reading.

    I could tell that it was him within the first sentence.

    This reminds me of the article where the lab guy wrote a Matlab application using the file system to store all variables, and was wondering why it was so slow.

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to Cornflowerblue
    Cornflowerblue:
    "Thanks, but I know when to stop before we create a monster."

    I have yet to meet a human being able to pronounce such sentence.

    My wife began saying this after bearing four delightful, quiet, well-behaved children.

  • Capt. Obvious (unregistered) in reply to amomynous
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    I don't understand why this would be the case. Languages evolve pretty frequently now-a-days. Heck, C++ has lambda functions, templates, the STL and TR1 but is still called C++. Java ten or twenty years from now may look more like Python or JavaScript or anything else, but there will almost certainly be a language used called Java.

    Also, what's the advantage of constantly using new languages? What do languages offer that switching to a new library doesn't? Or extending the old language?

    This is a question I constantly ask myself... I've had to use a lot of different languages and, well, I find myself wondering why so much time and effort is wasted doing something that seems like it's fundamentally a waste.

    Also, JavaScript can die in a fire

  • amomynous (unregistered) in reply to Capt. Obvious
    Capt. Obvious:
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    I don't understand why this would be the case. Languages evolve pretty frequently now-a-days. Heck, C++ has lambda functions, templates, the STL and TR1 but is still called C++. Java ten or twenty years from now may look more like Python or JavaScript or anything else, but there will almost certainly be a language used called Java.

    Also, what's the advantage of constantly using new languages? What do languages offer that switching to a new library doesn't? Or extending the old language?

    This is a question I constantly ask myself... I've had to use a lot of different languages and, well, I find myself wondering why so much time and effort is wasted doing something that seems like it's fundamentally a waste.

    Also, JavaScript can die in a fire

    I agree most of the time is mostly a matter of syntax preference (identation X reserved words X curly braces), but I guess really new languages spawn to offer some sort of real difference that may be interesting (to some, not others)... wide compile-time validation, low-level control, scripting power, dynamic variables, parallelism-oriented, some new fancy paradigm, etc.

    Any language that expands too much beyond its boundaries is more or less doomed to become some sort of ugly patchwork... by then, a new one, with those ideas built-in from the start may be a winner. C won't have a GC, Java won't have raw pointers, and I dare to say that if you try, you most likely ruin it.

  • (cs)

    Couple of points:

    Modesto: TRWTF! (enough said). The only good reason to visit Modesto is to pass through it on the way to Yosemite.

    On Fortran: Yes, it will be around long after we have gone. It is like a cockroach, it can't be killed. As always, there is the adage: One can write Fortran in any language if one desires.

    Me? I started out with Fortran II (yes, it had 'IF (SENSE SWITCH n)' statements!). The machine had sense switches as well! It was a while ago.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Fortran? I scripted a web site in DCL about 6 years ago. I knew it would be 100% unportable, but the point was to get it running for the short term.

    I used to write a fair bit of things in assembly language on PDP-11s and Vaxen.

    However,the least portable program I ever wrote was 0 bytes long and ran on a PDP-11 with RSTS/E. It was actually quite useful.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to amomynous
    amomynous:
    Any language that expands too much beyond its boundaries is more or less doomed to become some sort of ugly patchwork...

    And some start that way.

  • (cs)

    Girls are good at making complaints and finding stuff that does not exist. If this were a boy programmer, he would have fixed the code instead of submitting to TDWFT.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to herby
    herby:
    On Fortran: Yes, it will be around long after we have gone. It is like a cockroach, it can't be killed.
    It can be f2c'ed. The resulting C code isn't much worse than the average TDWTF front page article.
    herby:
    Me? I started out with Fortran II (yes, it had 'IF (SENSE SWITCH n)' statements!). The machine had sense switches as well! It was a while ago.
    Actually that's pretty easy to emulate with message boxes. "Is sense switch %d on? [Y] [N]" You might want to add a checkbox for "Remember this answer" if the program is going to test the sense switch a million times.
  • (cs)

    Evil contributor [grinning evilly]: ...and I'll triple your funding if you'll take this sledgehammer and smash your toes with it!

  • Cheong (unregistered)

    Ha ha System.out.println()...

    Back in 10+ years ago, when I want doing my FYI on Java based CGI web, I used that a lot. :P

    Oh the old days...

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Cheong

    Oh it's FYP not FYI, too bad I can't edit here...

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to RFox
    RFox:
    Whew it's 2014 -- and yes I paid my Fortran dues.
    Time after time?
  • Anonymousy (unregistered) in reply to Capt. Obvious

    Also, JavaScript can die in a fire

    You really should read douglas crockford, or watch him on youtube. I have seen the future and its name was interpreted languages.

    ps. TRWTF was multiple calls to system.out.println

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to eric76
    eric76:
    I used to write a fair bit of things in assembly language on PDP-11s and Vaxen.

    However,the least portable program I ever wrote was 0 bytes long and ran on a PDP-11 with RSTS/E. It was actually quite useful.

    Ok, I'll bite. How did you write a 0-byte program, and what was it useful for?

  • (cs) in reply to Capt. Obvious
    Capt. Obvious:
    amomynous:
    RFox:
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN" - C.A.R. Hoare
    "I don't know what the programming language of the year 2035 will look like, but I know it will not be called Java, VB, PHP, C#, Python..." - Me, a Java guy

    Yep, technology is going too fast... only thing I know is that I'll be a dinosaur if I remain on my first language.

    I don't understand why this would be the case. Languages evolve pretty frequently now-a-days. Heck, C++ has lambda functions, templates, the STL and TR1 but is still called C++. Java ten or twenty years from now may look more like Python or JavaScript or anything else, but there will almost certainly be a language used called Java.

    Also, what's the advantage of constantly using new languages? What do languages offer that switching to a new library doesn't? Or extending the old language?

    This is a question I constantly ask myself... I've had to use a lot of different languages and, well, I find myself wondering why so much time and effort is wasted doing something that seems like it's fundamentally a waste.

    Also, JavaScript can die in a fire

    Unfortunate, but javascript is the only thing that will stay after 100 million years. javascript is COBOL of 21st century. You can hate it, but it won't go away.

  • MIT Grad (unregistered) in reply to Capt. Obvious
    Capt. Obvious:
    Also, JavaScript can die in a fire

    Ah, another "I can't get my head around a Prototype language!" developer, huh? Curse you, MIT!

  • EnterpriseIdiot (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    eric76:
    I used to write a fair bit of things in assembly language on PDP-11s and Vaxen.

    However,the least portable program I ever wrote was 0 bytes long and ran on a PDP-11 with RSTS/E. It was actually quite useful.

    Ok, I'll bite. How did you write a 0-byte program, and what was it useful for?

    http://www.ioccc.org/1994/smr.hint It's simply an empty file, where the actual program was written in the preprocessor. Running the executable would simply output the source code of the program (an empty file).

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