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Programming language designers have been meeting in secret in order to make critical decisions related to the advent of ubiquitous self driving technologies. A
by robomartin 7y ago
Programming language designers have been meeting in secret in order to make critical decisions related to the advent of ubiquitous self driving technologies. A decision on how to handle this is imminent. Participants include all mainstream languages, C, C++, Python, etc.
The currently winning proposal is to extend the standard "if" conditional statement (or the closely related "switch" construct) to include another option designed for self driving cars.
Programmers today can opt to use "if", "else if" and "else" or "case" and "default". The proposal would be to add a "fuck!" option to these statements.
While usage isn't fully defined yet, the idea is that there are instances when no reasonable decision can be made. In these cases "else" or "default" don't quite capture or convey the critical nature of having to make what is, effectively, an impossible decision. Hence the introduction of "fuck!". Here's example pseudo-code:
if(some_condition):
{...}
else if(some_other_condition):
{...}
else: // Unknown but not critical condition
{...}
fuck!: // Critical condition for which there are no good options
{...}
Language designers expect to issue an official announcement within the next five years. As is to be expected, there are no good options here and they hesitate to even suggest that "fuck!" should be integrated into these languages but they seem to have no options left at this point.