April Fools

ruby-talk
1

Hey guys and gals,

Check out slashdot for some great April fool’s jokes. It’s hilarious.
Here are the headlines:

···

  • Spoiler warning…

  • Slashdot headlines below.

  • (in case you want to read them from slashdot or elsewhere).

  • “Gnome is closing the source to be able to support tcpa and palladium.
    The gnomemeeting PRO version will be available for $50 tomorrow and GPL
    version will be discontinued.”

  • “BSDs to be Merged”

  • “New security measures are being suggested (see RFC 3514) for the IPv4
    header. The measures include a bit that can be set and unset according
    to whether the packet is secure or not.”

  • “ThinkGeek.com is now selling the new George Foreman USB iGrill This
    grill is computer controlled, accesible over the internet, and is
    powered by USB.”

  • Enlightenment goes 1.0

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

  • Gentoo Linux Rethinks Package Management System.

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

----- End forwarded message -----

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

2

Please, I know this is ruby-talk, but you can’t get much more
off-topic than this.

···

Daniel Carrera (dcarrera@math.umd.edu) wrote:

[snip]

–
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
All messages signed with fingerprint:
FEC2 57F1 D465 EB15 5D6E 7C11 332A 551C 796C 9F04

3

Hi!

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

I do not think that this is only a /April Fool’?s Joke/.
It should not be complicated to write a little Ruby script that
allows you to map Brainfuck’s syntactical elements (only a handful of
characters) to white space.

This was actually my first thought when I saw the annoncement.
Moreover I took a look at the helo world program (using bvi the
binary vi) - it is really more than a joke.

One should keep in mind that ruby’s syntax does look strange to some
people as well.

Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt http://jupp.tux.nu jupp(AT)gmx(DOT)de

···

–
“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”
– John F. Kennedy

4

dear rubyers
you should check out the linuxtoday.com headlines. rms and bill gates join hand to form the free shared source license.

regards
warren brian noronha
warren@freedomink.org

···

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 05:54:01 +0900 Daniel Carrera dcarrera@math.umd.edu wrote:

Hey guys and gals,

Check out slashdot for some great April fool’s jokes. It’s hilarious.
Here are the headlines:

  • Spoiler warning…

  • Slashdot headlines below.

  • (in case you want to read them from slashdot or elsewhere).

  • “Gnome is closing the source to be able to support tcpa and palladium.
    The gnomemeeting PRO version will be available for $50 tomorrow and GPL
    version will be discontinued.”

  • “BSDs to be Merged”

  • “New security measures are being suggested (see RFC 3514) for the IPv4
    header. The measures include a bit that can be set and unset according
    to whether the packet is secure or not.”

  • “ThinkGeek.com is now selling the new George Foreman USB iGrill This
    grill is computer controlled, accesible over the internet, and is
    powered by USB.”

  • Enlightenment goes 1.0

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

  • Gentoo Linux Rethinks Package Management System.

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

----- End forwarded message -----

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

5

Please, I know this is ruby-talk, but you can’t get much more
off-topic than this.

True.
Sorry.

···

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

6

I’ll drag it back on-topic with some
suggestions for improving Ruby.

It’s still April 1 where I am… :wink:

The @ sign is pretty useful for indicating
instance (@) and class (@@) variables.

But I suggest in addition to @foo and @@foo,
we use @@@foo, @@@@foo, and @@@@@foo.
Semantics for these are forthcoming.

As an addition to the reflection API, we can
call nats() (“number of at signs”) instead
of counting them: :@@@@@foo.nats # 5

We already have =, ==, and ===. I propose
we add ==== and =====. The two new operators
would have semantics of “these are are really,
really equal, no joke” and "these are so equal
they’re pretty much the same damn thing"
respectively.

Ruby needs a goto. In the spirit of orthogonality,
let’s also add a comefrom.

We need some new keywords to simplify our
control structures.

if cond1
expr1
else
expr2
unless cond2
inwhichcase
expr3
butonlyif
expr4
andthenonlywhen
cond3
end

Finally, and most importantly:

We all know and love the “!” and "?"
suffixes on method names. But by using two
suffixes, we can add even more features
to Ruby:

!? Modify the receiver, then tell me
if you really did it
?! A Heisenberg method. Tell me its
current state, then change that
state randomly. Sometimes.
?? Tell me if this is really the
Boolean value I want to check.
!! Modify the receiver, and this time
I mean it!

Cheers,
Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Eric Hodel” drbrain@segment7.net
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 3:15 PM
Subject: Re: April Fools.

7

“Eric Hodel” drbrain@segment7.net wrote in message
news:20030401211527.GR53306@segment7.net…

Please, I know this is ruby-talk, but you can’t get much more
off-topic than this.

Ahh come on - sure there must be bandwidth for a joke now and then -
especially frome someone like Daniel who positively contributes to the Ruby
community.

I’d be more concerned about those threads going on forever without reaching
any conclusion.

Mikkel

8
  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

I do not think that this is only a /April Fool’?s Joke/.
[snip]
Moreover I took a look at the helo world program (using bvi the
binary vi) - it is really more than a joke.

One should keep in mind that ruby’s syntax does look strange to some
people as well.

Yes but… white space?
I mean… come on.
At least you can “look at” Ruby’s syntax.

···

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 09:24:47AM +0900, Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt wrote:

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

redoubtable: redoubtable (re-DOU-tuh-buhl) adjective
Arousing fear or awe; evoking respect or honor.

9

I’m pretty sure it’s not. Although, getting it on /. on 2003.04.01
was clever!

I bet Whitespace programs gzip excellently! I think a Whitespace
interpreter that can run gzip’ed whitespace programs would be most
excellent.

I wonder if Whitespace is Turing-complete … it’d be fun to write a
web application in Whitespace.

– Dossy

···

On 2003.04.02, Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt jupp@gmx.de wrote:

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

I do not think that this is only a /April Fool’?s Joke/.

–
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
“He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly – then you can let go and quickly move on.” (p. 70)

10

I think that someone has done just that:

Please feel free to link to it, if you wish:

    http://yagni.com/whitespace/index.html
···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt” jupp@gmx.de
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 5:24 PM
Subject: Re: April Fools.

Hi!

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

I do not think that this is only a /April Fool’?s Joke/.
It should not be complicated to write a little Ruby script that
allows you to map Brainfuck’s syntactical elements (only a handful of
characters) to white space.

This was actually my first thought when I saw the annoncement.
Moreover I took a look at the helo world program (using bvi the
binary vi) - it is really more than a joke.

One should keep in mind that ruby’s syntax does look strange to some
people as well.

Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt http://jupp.tux.nu jupp(AT)gmx(DOT)de

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”
– John F. Kennedy

11

We already have =, ==, and ===. I propose
we add ==== and =====. The two new operators
would have semantics of “these are are really,
really equal, no joke” and “these are so equal
they’re pretty much the same damn thing”
respectively.

LOL on this one.

Ruby needs a goto. In the spirit of orthogonality,
let’s also add a comefrom.

So, Hal, just how would I use a ‘comefrom’ command?
Kinda non-causal, don’t you think? :slight_smile:

I’m not the most creative person, but there has
to be a way to add some southern lingo into the
the langauge, like:

fixin
fixinto

···

On Wednesday, 2 April 2003 at 6:47:55 +0900, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

–
Jim Freeze

You might have mail

12

“Hal E. Fulton” hal9000@hypermetrics.com wrote in message
news:06a701c2f898$bb7f6140$0300a8c0@austin.rr.com…

It’s still April 1 where I am… :wink:

I’m out by 29 minutes.
Could you please post this for me:

The upcoming Perl 6 release will ship with a significantly reduced set of
operators. This will allow Perl to increase its execution speed with
approximately 35% over the alternative covering current functionality. One
of the features supposedly dropped is the $operator because global variables
jams the instruction pipeline optimizer severely. Key Perl developers have
left the project in protest, but the decision remains firm. The Perl spirit
dictates that there is more than one way to do it and this also goes for how
to implement Perl.

Mikkel

···

----- Original Message -----

13

Um… not to some of us who got reeled in… ;->

···

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Daniel Carrera wrote:

Please, I know this is ruby-talk, but you can’t get much more
off-topic than this.

True.
Sorry.

–
Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137

coadunate: coadunate (ko-AJ-uh-nit, -nayt) adjective
United by growth; closely joined.

14

ruby/STL version 0.1 anouncement

features:

  • vector
  • map
  • string
  • cstdio
···

–
Simon Strandgaard

15

Dossy wrote:

···

On 2003.04.02, Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt jupp@gmx.de wrote:

  • New Whitespace-Only Programming Language.

I do not think that this is only a /April Fool’?s Joke/.

I’m pretty sure it’s not. Although, getting it on /. on 2003.04.01
was clever!

I bet Whitespace programs gzip excellently! I think a Whitespace
interpreter that can run gzip’ed whitespace programs would be most
excellent.

I wonder if Whitespace is Turing-complete … it’d be fun to write a
web application in Whitespace.

Sure. The Whitespace compiler works like this. Count the number N of
spaces. Calculate the prime factors of N. The exponents of 2, 3, 5…
are checked to be in the range of ascii characters (32-127, is it?).
Then run a C compiler on this sequence of characters.

I wonder if the source code for hello, world would fit in the known
universe, let alone a web app?

16

how about…

puts x if you feel like it

Assertion facilities

···

coulddo, woulddo, mightdo and shoulddobutcant

Calum

17

“Jim Freeze” jim@freeze.org wrote in message
news:20030401171016.A54033@freeze.org…

So, Hal, just how would I use a ‘comefrom’ command?
Kinda non-causal, don’t you think? :slight_smile:

I was actually pointed to a language with such a construct, but I don’t
recall what it was called perhaps it was Befunge.
Anyway I’ve been working something like a comefrom construct. When
programming interactive behavior, you sometimes need to go back to an
earlier point in time and redo whatever you were doing - this is
particularly relevant after detecting a logical error in entered data.
Seaside / Iowa is also dealing with similar concepts although I don’t think
you can programmatically go back in time.

Mikkel

18

“Joel VanderWerf” vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU wrote in message

I wonder if the source code for hello, world would fit in the known
universe

Well, check this out: http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/hworld.ws
It is 1408 bytes long !

19

I really don’t know how we could live for so long without

                    DISCONTINUATIONS

In fact I implemented it already, here’s what I told my local version of
ri about it:

--------------------------------------------------------- Kernel::calldc
calldc {| cont | block } → anObject

···

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 07:03:13AM +0900, Jim Freeze wrote:

On Wednesday, 2 April 2003 at 6:47:55 +0900, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

We already have =, ==, and ===. I propose
we add ==== and =====. The two new operators
would have semantics of “these are are really,
really equal, no joke” and “these are so equal
they’re pretty much the same damn thing”
respectively.

LOL on this one.

Ruby needs a goto. In the spirit of orthogonality,
let’s also add a comefrom.

So, Hal, just how would I use a ‘comefrom’ command?
Kinda non-causal, don’t you think? :slight_smile:

 Generates a Discontinuation object, which it passes to the associated
 block. Performing a cont.call will not cause the calldc to return (as
 won't falling through the end of the block). The value returned by
 the callcc is not the value of the block, nor the value passed to
 cont.call. See Continuation on page 298 for other details. Also see
 Kernel::throw for a mechanism for unwinding a call stack.

You will agree, I am sure, on the extreme power of calldc.

–
_ _

__ __ | | ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
'_ \ / | __/ __| '_ _ \ / ` | ’ \
) | (| | |__ \ | | | | | (| | | | |
.__/ _,|_|/| || ||_,|| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

On the Internet, no one knows you’re using Windows NT
– Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo, restrugo@fateware.com

20

Intercal

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ComeFrom

···

— MikkelFJ mikkelfj-anti-spam@bigfoot.com wrote:

“Jim Freeze” jim@freeze.org wrote in message
news:20030401171016.A54033@freeze.org…

So, Hal, just how would I use a ‘comefrom’ command?
Kinda non-causal, don’t you think? :slight_smile:

I was actually pointed to a language with such a construct, but I
don’t
recall what it was called perhaps it was Befunge.

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