Return to NICKLES.WORTH CVS log

Up to [Apple XNU] / GNUtools / emacs / etc

Annotation of GNUtools/emacs/etc/NICKLES.WORTH, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: Article from _Computer Language_ by Bruce Tonkin.
        !             2: 
        !             3:      Several prominent software companies have caused a stir lately by dropping
        !             4: all development work in Pascal and adopting Microsoft BASIC.  When queried all
        !             5: have declined to comment about this move, but one company insider (code-named
        !             6: Deep Poke) suggested talking to Niklaus Wirth to get the full story.
        !             7:      Speaking from his home in Zurich, Switzerland, Wirth proved to be a far
        !             8: more genial soul than one might imagine, being the founder of Pascal and all. 
        !             9: But the European lifestyle obviously agrees with him, and he was more than
        !            10: willing to provide some insights into this strange phenomenon, currently taking
        !            11: place in the computer industry.
        !            12:      In fact, what began as an innocent inquiry eventually revealed a shocking
        !            13: and exclusive piece of information: that the invention of Pascal nearly 20
        !            14: years ago was intended entirely as a joke, an April Fools' prank.  
        !            15:      Wirth tried to explain.  "Every year at the Swiss Federal Institute for
        !            16: Technology [the university in Zurich where Wirth is a professor of computer
        !            17: science] I taught the same classes, gave the same tests, told the same
        !            18: jokes," he began.  "it was boring.  I needed a little humor.  So I started
        !            19: talking about this crazy language called Pascal.  Eventually, the Pascal joke
        !            20: became so popular I just kept adding to it, making it more and more elaborate.
        !            21:      "But some of the students went to class so seldom that they missed the
        !            22: joke and thought Pascal was a real language!  Imagine the looks on their faces
        !            23: when they got out into the world and discovered there was no such thing as a
        !            24: language called Pascal.  Hoo-boy!  They sure learned to pay attention after
        !            25: that!"  he said, giggling.
        !            26:      Several of his better students, he continued, figured they'd make some
        !            27: money by fleecing the people who actually believed in Pascal and so wrote a
        !            28: simple Pascal compiler for this purpose.  It was actually a kind of prank, much
        !            29: like selling elevator passes to high school freshmen.
        !            30:      "Yes, yes," Wirth said, "the UCSD operating system started the same way.
        !            31: The same bunch of rascals who did the whole Pascal thing kept pushing the idea
        !            32: until it reached the point of complete absurdity.  They were hysterical!
        !            33: Especially late at night - they'd come up with some really boffo material.
        !            34: They the next week they'd modify it and it would get even more entertaining."
        !            35:      Wirth's best student was Philippe Kahn, who he met while Kahn was a
        !            36: student.  "I used to go to a small bistro called 'Der Blaue Engel' after my
        !            37: classes, and it happened that Kahn played jazz saxophone there while people
        !            38: danced on the tables."  Wirth was impressed with Kahn's talent and evident wit
        !            39: and encouraged him to end his musical career and enter the lucrative field of
        !            40: software comedy.  Once he explained Pascal's comedic possibilities, Kahn was
        !            41: hooked and quickly agreed.
        !            42:      Since most of the staff at Apple Computer Inc. was educated at the
        !            43: University of California at San Diego, they were also in on the joke, Wirth
        !            44: said.  "That's why they kept pushing Pascal.  A bunch of fine kids, those Apple
        !            45: guys.  Born comedians, most of them.  Except this one guy - he had no sense
        !            46: of humor at all. [Editor's hint: not Woz.]
        !            47:      "When we finally decided to do a DOS that was even funnier than UCSD
        !            48: Pascal, the feeling was that UCSD was already the ultimate.  But then one of
        !            49: the guys proposed doing a DOS that was written in Pascal but used hieroglyphics
        !            50: instead of a written language.  What a genius!  We were rolling in the aisles.
        !            51: But that one guy, he thought we were serious.  What a nerd!"
        !            52:      Wirth's list of the funniest features of Pascal begins with the lack of a
        !            53: string data type, no random file access, primitive numeric handling, and the
        !            54: existential absurdity of the semicolon.
        !            55:      "But I'd have to say that my crowning achievement was the lack of input
        !            56: and output functions.  First you can't get anything in too easy.  And once it's
        !            57: in, you can't do much with it.  Pascal isn't good with letters and it's not
        !            58: good at all with numbers.  Besides, I made it very picky.  You have to
        !            59: recompile, recompile, recompile forever.  Ha!  And once you've done something
        !            60: with the data, you can't get it out."  Wirth started chuckling uncontrollably.
        !            61: "Philippe has said C is a write-only language - I made Pascal a read-only
        !            62: language!"  His chuckling turned into hysterical laughter that went on for
        !            63: several minutes.
        !            64:      "Of course, some didn't get the joke," he finally said when he could speak
        !            65: again.  "They kept trying to make Pascal actually useful.  But I stopped them;
        !            66: I made the original Pascal a standard.  That meant anyone who made Pascal good
        !            67: for anything was nonstandard and out on a limb!"
        !            68: 
        !            69:                            *  *  *  *  *
        !            70: 
        !            71:      How will all this affect the future of Modula-2?  Wirths' merry manner
        !            72: and beaming face suddenly became hard when presented with this question;
        !            73: perhaps this was taboo territory, sacred subject matter.
        !            74:      "Modula-2 is a real language," he finally said, his demeanor solemn.  "It
        !            75: represents a serious effort on my part to make amends for any damage caused by
        !            76: well-meaning but unimaginative people teaching and learning Pascal.
        !            77:      "But it's so hard!  Pascal is a very good joke, yes?  But to make a really
        !            78: good language from it is not so easy," he sighed.
        !            79:      In addition to Pascal, Wirth admitted, three other languages also were
        !            80: intended as pranks: Forth, PL/I, and True BASIC.
        !            81:      "Forth is essentially black humor," Wirth said.  "Charles Moore [who
        !            82: created the language in the late 1960s] designed it as a native language for
        !            83: people whose brains ran backward."  Originally, he continued, it was supposed
        !            84: to be the ultimate parody of Hewlett-Packard calculators, which Moore has been
        !            85: competing with unsuccessfully for years.  As an astronomer, he had used HP's
        !            86: calculators out of necessity rather than any appreciation for their design.
        !            87: But to his great surprise, he found that there were actually quite a few
        !            88: people whose brains did run in reverse.  Eventually, Moore came to see Forth
        !            89: as a boon, especially for backward thinkers.  "At least it keeps them of the
        !            90: streets out of really serious trouble," Wirth said.  "Imagine one of them
        !            91: trying to drive a car or operate heavy machinery!"
        !            92:      PL/I originally stood for "Prostituted Language/Interface," Wirth
        !            93: explained.  "The designers were under so much pressure to add features and
        !            94: include every possible construction from every other language in existence that
        !            95: they eventually gave up and decided to play the whole thing for laughs.  They
        !            96: said 'yes' to every request, no matter how absurd, and even added things to
        !            97: the language no one ever could or would use.  The scoured journals for
        !            98: off-beat syntax and weird symbolic notation; some of their better ideas came
        !            99: from early editions of The Mad Reader and other E. C. publications.  Besides,
        !           100: several of them were upset with the compiler-writing team and decided to stick
        !           101: it to them with a life-time project."
        !           102:      True BASIC is not "True" in the sense most people understand the word,
        !           103: Wirth continued.  Rather, "True" is itself an acronym for a "Totally wRecked-Up
        !           104: Example of."  The professors who came up with it are amazed that no one has
        !           105: yet caught on to the joke; they felt sure their insistence on the LET keyword
        !           106: would be a dead giveaway.  "Of course there were other clues, but this was the
        !           107: most clear-cut," Wirth said.  "They even called Microsoft BASIC a street
        !           108: BASIC in hopes that Bill Gates would challenge them and reveal the joke."
        !           109: But Gates refused to play along, and both professors had to all but beg Wirth
        !           110: to tell the world the truth about True BASIC before things went any further.
        !           111: 
        !           112:                             *  *  *  *  *
        !           113: 
        !           114:      Jokes abound in the world of operating systems as well, according to
        !           115: Wirth.  In addition to the UCSD Pascal operating system, said Wirth, "Tandy,
        !           116: Apple, and Commodore were for a number of years carrying out a private comedic
        !           117: battle to see who could produce the world's funniest DOS."
        !           118:      Tandy's TRS-DOS (Tandy Radio Signal Detection Operating System - a
        !           119: reference to the fact that early machines would reboot when any transmitted
        !           120: signal was detected) was an early front-runner until Apple came out with the
        !           121: vary amusing Control-D command what could enable or disable disk operations.
        !           122: In the end, though, Commodore won the battle.  Its DOS was oriented toward
        !           123: records exactly the size of punch cards and took over four minutes to boot from
        !           124: disk since it read disk data more slowly than most audio tape machines and even
        !           125: some 300-baud modems.
        !           126:      But the funniest joke of all is, in Wirth's estimation, also the most
        !           127: common, and he's amazed so few people have caught on to it yet.
        !           128:      "Come on, come on.  Surely you can guess," he said, his voice rising in
        !           129: excitement.  "What one thing makes users more livid than any other? What one
        !           130: computer product makes you feel sure it was produced by a team of trained
        !           131: gerbils on mind-altering drugs?  Yes, yes, yes! You see it now - manuals!"
        !           132:      Wirth considers Gates, who wrote all the BASIC manuals and who was on the
        !           133: staff of many others, a "comic genius."  "Mitch Kapor should get more
        !           134: recognition - he's far better than Neil Simon. And what's-his-name, the guy
        !           135: who wrote the WordStar manual - he got an award at at dinner we threw for
        !           136: him a few years back.  That manual is a classic in the truest Marxist
        !           137: [brothers] sense of the word!  Pure slapstick!  But the best of them all is the
        !           138: author of the dBase II manual.  Now there is a writer for the ages!"
        !           139:      As for the IBM manuals, Wirth considers them mere hack work.  "Anyone can
        !           140: do stuff like that," he snorted.
        !           141:      But perusing a copy of the manual for NEWDOS, he seemed a little more
        !           142: impressed.  "Hmmmm.  Not bad work.  Not bad at all," he said.  "But it's still
        !           143: simple stuff.  'To do this, read page 40.  But to know what's on page 40, you
        !           144: have to read page 65, which refers to page 15, which shows a whole list of
        !           145: exceptions for page 53.'  Entertaining, but hardly in the class of any of the
        !           146: modern masters of the art."  But when his attention was brought to the fact
        !           147: that none of the error numbers listed in the NEWDOS manual were ever returned
        !           148: to the BASIC programmer, and that the most common disk setup (double-density,
        !           149: double-sided) was not on the configuration menu, Wirth admitted that these were
        !           150: indeed nice touches.
        !           151:      Although it is a known fact that most of the early computer manuals
        !           152: (probably even the NEWDOS manual) were written by programmers and that
        !           153: programmers are notoriously poor writers, Wirth would not be deterred from his
        !           154: opinion that these writings are works of art.
        !           155:      "Most people fail to consider that good programmers are very bright.
        !           156: Their thoughts are extremely well organized and most of them have the benefit
        !           157: of higher education.  Their brains are not warped by overexposure to TV and
        !           158: their attention spans are not short-circuited by overindulgence in sex, drugs,
        !           159: or alcohol.  They are not constrained by conventionality.  If you want to get
        !           160: picky, there are a lot more programmers than there ever were writers.  And
        !           161: programmers simply work harder than writers.  Few writers work 100 hours a
        !           162: week; almost all programmers do."
        !           163:      The result, according to Wirth?  "All programmers write at least as well
        !           164: as Faulkner.  Most are as good as Proust, and about a third are as good as
        !           165: Dickens.  Several hundred are at least as good as Shakespeare.  So the manuals
        !           166: you thought were inferior were simply beyond your poor ability to appreciate.
        !           167: If you were a programmer, you would delight in their verbal virtuosity," he
        !           168: said.
        !           169:      In fact, Wirth claimed, even the grammatical errors and misspellings in
        !           170: the manuals were placed there deliberately.  Most are elaborate literary
        !           171: allusions and puns; some are inventive Joycean neologisms.  As an example,
        !           172: Wirth discussed the history of the word "kernal."
        !           173:      "Everyone, including programmers, knows the word is spelled k-e-r-n-e-l,"
        !           174: he explained.   "The deliberate misspelling is an implied criticism of the
        !           175: typesetter (a writer's bane for years.)  Of course typesetters kern the letter
        !           176: l; thus, 'kern el.'   But kerning can only be done for certain letter
        !           177: combinations, such as two l's.  Thus, 'kern a l' dares the typesetter to kern
        !           178: an isolated l, an obvious typographic impossibility.
        !           179:      "Moreover," he continued, "'kernal' is an anagram for 'rankle,' which
        !           180: describes programmers' feelings toward typesetters.  Finally the inventor of
        !           181: this particular word, R. K. Lane (who is well known within the Southern
        !           182: California computer community) has concealed his name by means of yet another
        !           183: anagram."
        !           184:      Wirth smiled a last secretive smile, leaving us all to wonder if this was
        !           185: perhaps just one more in his series of personal computer pranks.
        !           186: 
        !           187: 
        !           188: 

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.