Weirdest Practical Programming Language

[Regenuluz]

Weirdest language I've tried, has got to be Gezel. It's a hardware language, like VDHL, but *no one* uses it.

I had to implement a CPU in it, for a class at uni. ^^

On a side note, why on earth is PHP a weird language? O.o

[Riven]

I have seen, but not used, a computer which implemented SK-combinator calculus in hardware.

Intel released a CPU that does garbage collection in hardware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432

[Danny02]

you can even run a java app without a main method.

1	class App{static{println("hello world")}}

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[jonjava]

I can't wrap my head around Ada and why it's so useful. Tasks and rendezvous make no sense to me <.<

[sproingie]

FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN

... truthfully though, I never liked ANS FORTH's syntax for IF. PostScript's syntax is much more elegant.

[sproingie]

There are two completely different reasons to learn a new language:
1) Because it is (or might be) directly useful to know.
2) Because it teaches you something new about programming.
And it's pretty infrequent that you'll run across one that fulls both of these categories at a given time.

QFT.  But it's usually the case that option 2 eventually has benefits that help you with option 1.  Pure functional idioms for example can help you write better code in imperative languages.  But it's definitely a long-term investment with a delayed payoff.

[matheus23]

There are two completely different reasons to learn a new language:
1) Because it is (or might be) directly useful to know.
2) Because it teaches you something new about programming.
And it's pretty infrequent that you'll run across one that fulls both of these categories at a given time.

QFT.  But it's usually the case that option 2 eventually has benefits that help you with option 1.  Pure functional idioms for example can help you write better code in imperative languages.  But it's definitely a long-term investment with a delayed payoff.

What I constantly hear from functional programmers is, that if you ever start to learn and understand a functional language there is no reason to go back...

[princec]

On a side note, why on earth is PHP a weird language? O.o

PHP, a fractal of bad design

Cas

[Regenuluz]

That was an interesting read.  Some of it I knew already, but that list was looong. xD

And it's not even possible to really argue against it. Made me consider trying out Python or Perl to make web stuff.

Though, the only thing there that makes it a "weird" language is the fact that there's no clear naming conventions. The rest just make it a crap language. ^_^

Edit:

Didn't know about the query string thing though. Seems insane to add something like that. :/ (And by the link he gives, it seems Perl is doing the same)

Edit edit:
Seems like the Perl version is purely a joke xD

[ra4king]

you can even run a java app without a main method.

1	class App{static{println("hello world")}}

Nope, the JVM will crash complaining that it can't find a main method before it runs any code.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Danny02]

you can even run a java app without a main method.

1	class App{static{println("hello world")}}

Nope, the JVM will crash complaining that it can't find a main method before it runs any code.

it might not work with java 7, because it is no "documented" feature.
there is also a way of using a "feature" of windows, to print to the commandline when compiling a specialy prepared class

only works on windows: name the file A.class

1	class Con { String hi = "\n\nHello World\n\n"; }

[erikd]

Though, the only thing there that makes it a "weird" language is the fact that there's no clear naming conventions. The rest just make it a crap language. ^_^

IMHO the weirdness is that there are so many experts in something that's so fundamentally broken.

[xsvenson]

On a side note, why on earth is PHP a weird language? O.o

PHP, a fractal of bad design

Cas

Best read ever. Thank You, kind sir. Here, an appreciation cookie.
Edit: sry for the necro :/ I'm a late bloomer and reading through old threads.

[kpars]

Look up LOLCODE on wikipedia, probably the funniest one I've seen, and I've actually used it before.

[gimbal]

On a side note, why on earth is PHP a weird language? O.o

PHP, a fractal of bad design

Cas

Edit: sry for the necro :/ I'm a late bloomer and reading through old threads.

Its not a necro when the thread is as young as this, and I missed it and now I got to enjoy that epic read so thanks for that.

I've done some PHP myself in the past, only back then I was simply too inexperienced to put my finger on why it sucked. All I knew was that I was so darned unproductive with it and it was hard to create something interesting that was not slow. That's not to say that I was more productive when I switched to working with servlets & JSPs on Tomcat 4 at the time, but at least I had the sane Java JDK and virtual machine to back me up. Java has been my best friend since, as long as you stay away from applets of course.

I also did some Ruby on Rails which I am marginally impressed with, but it is so flexible it scares me. Any platform that allows you to add methods to a specific object INSTANCE is mad in my opinion. Great for runtime instrumentation in frameworks, but it is available for anyone to do it.

[matheus23]

Any platform that allows you to add methods to a specific object INSTANCE is mad in my opinion. Great for runtime instrumentation in frameworks, but it is available for anyone to do it.

Mhm... I want that feature in scala...

[gouessej]

I find Esterel and OCaml very weird, like their creators chose to disturb developers with their syntaxes.

[kpars]

LOLCODE:

1   2   3   4

HAI CAN HAS STDIO? VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!" KTHXBYE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

[Sammidysam]

Hmm.  The LOLCODE example makes complete sense to me.

[kpars]

How 'bout I make that harder for you.

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8

HAI  CAN HAS STDIO?  PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"?      AWSUM THX          VISIBLE FILE      O NOES          INVISIBLE "ERRROR!"  KTHXBYE

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

HAI CAN HAS STDIO? I HAS A VAR IM IN YR LOOP    UP VAR!!1    VISIBLE VAR    IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHX IM OUTTA YR LOOP KTHXBYE

[Vermeer]

Wow never seen LOLCODE before.

Strangely it is quite readable, I guess it prints 1 to 10?

Amazing!

[ReBirth]

1-11 I think. The >10 check happens after the increment and print.

[kpars]

It seems like it checks to see if the variable is greater than 10, then it gets out of the method.

[matheus23]

It seems like it checks to see if the variable is greater than 10, then it gets out of the method.

Yes.

KTHX

seems to be like the

break

in java... translated into java that code looks like this (with never ever having known LOLCODE before...):

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

// HAI // sth. like #include<stdio.h> int var = 0; while (true) {     var++;     System.out.println(var);     if (var > 10) break; } // KTHXBYE

Somewhere near that.
The other one is this maybe:

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9

// HAI // again, #include<stdio.h> File file = new File("LOLCATS.TXT"); if (file.isReadable()) {     System.out.println(/* files content actually */ file); } else {     System.err.println("ERRROR!"); } // KTHXBYE

[Sammidysam]

I think that HAI maybe just defines that it is a file?  I can't see it being the starting point because in the hello world example it says

CAN HAS STDIO?

which would obviously equate to

#include <stdio.h>

.  So I don't actually know what HAI is anymore.

[matheus23]

HAI

I think that HAI maybe just defines that it is a file?

Yeah. I think it's just that the author thought it's more funny.
KTHXBYE

[Phased]

HAI

is like the opening of the program, all LOLCODE words represent pretty much there meaning

HAI - hello, like a new coversation
CAN HAS - Can I have
KTHXBYE - Ok i am done now, thanks bye
AWSUM THX - it returned true, in this case, the file "LOLCATS.txt" was found
O NOES - something returned false - in this case, the file "LOLCATS.txt" was invalid
VISIBLE - make this visible for the user
INVISIBLE - like a System.out.println(); in your code for debugging purposes

in other words, try and translate it to engligh
before

1   2   3   4

HAI CAN HAS STDIO? VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!" KTHXBYE

translated

1   2   3   4

new program import STDIO display message box "HAI WORLD" terminate program.