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"Few of us have been to Mars. But science fiction has filled in many of the gaps. We know that the Martian civilization is immensely old. Its software technolog

"Few of us have been to Mars. But science fiction has filled in many of the gaps. We know that the Martian civilization is immensely old. Its software technology, therefore, must be similarly antique. Obviously nothing like it exists on earth - though those of us who remember VMS might be deceived... ...Since Earth code is fifty years old, and Martian code is fifty million years old, Martian code has been evolving into a big ball of mud for a million times longer than Earth software. (And two million times longer than Windows...) ...There is only one thing to do with it: obliterate the trunk, fire the developers, and hire a whole new fscking army of Martian code-monkeys to rewrite the entire fscking thing. This is such an obvious and essential response to the big ball of mud pattern that, despite the fact that we know nothing about Mars, we can deduce that it must have happened on Mars. Probably several times. Probably several hundred. For each of these attempts but the last, of course, the result was either (a) abject failure, (b) another big ball of mud, or (c) both. But the last, by definition, succeeded. This is the crucial inference we can draw about Mars: since the Martians had 50 million years to try, in the end they must have succeeded. The result: Martian code, as we know it today. Not enormous and horrible - tiny and diamond-perfect." No comment on what follows, but you might find it entertaining. http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming-from.html http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progra...

barrkel 16y ago
Warning for others following the link: that's an overly verbose post with too much unfunny humour, describing a language whose implementation - on Google code - is written in a language (Watt) the author defines in the previous post. That language, in turn, doesn't appear to be much more than a more obscure version of the lambda calculus, and about as readable.
- ddewey 16y ago
  Counter-warning: I liked it :) but I tend to like more fanciful, meandering approaches to CS topics, like Why the Lucky Stiff and Clifford Pickover. Or Lewis Carroll, for that matter. Notable concepts from the article: a "fixed-point" of language design, the idea of working backward from an aesthetic (Martian) to a language, and Kelvin versioning, in which "releases count down by integer degrees Kelvin. At absolute zero, the system can no longer be changed." It's true, though; I found the actual language the author's made (or is still making?) to be pretty opaque.

barrkel 16y ago

Warning for others following the link: that's an overly verbose post with too much unfunny humour, describing a language whose implementation - on Google code - is written in a language (Watt) the author defines in the previous post. That language, in turn, doesn't appear to be much more than a more obscure version of the lambda calculus, and about as readable.

ddewey 16y ago
Counter-warning: I liked it :) but I tend to like more fanciful, meandering approaches to CS topics, like Why the Lucky Stiff and Clifford Pickover. Or Lewis Carroll, for that matter. Notable concepts from the article: a "fixed-point" of language design, the idea of working backward from an aesthetic (Martian) to a language, and Kelvin versioning, in which "releases count down by integer degrees Kelvin. At absolute zero, the system can no longer be changed." It's true, though; I found the actual language the author's made (or is still making?) to be pretty opaque.