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Author here. Thanks for reading. That reference comes directly from the INTERCAL-90 compiler. it has hilarious error messages. One of my favs is that it is an
by agbell 6y ago
Author here. Thanks for reading.
That reference comes directly from the INTERCAL-90 compiler. it has hilarious error messages. One of my favs is that it is an error to not say PLEASE enough and also an error to say PLEASE to often:
E079 PROGRAMMER IS INSUFFICIENTLY POLITE
The balance between various statement identifiers is important. If less than approximately one fifth of the statement identifiers used are the polite versions containing PLEASE, that causes this error at compile time.
E099 PROGRAMMER IS OVERLY POLITE
Of course, the same problem can happen in the other direction; this error is caused at compile time if more than about one third of the statement identifiers are the polite form.
Some more fun details:
- The compiler is called `ick`
- The compiler has a `-mystery` flag which is documented as
"This option is occasionally capable of doing something but is deliberately undocumented. Normally changing it will have no effect, but changing it is not recommended."
- Numbers have to be entered in English. 12345 would be written as `ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE` unless you put it in roman numeral mode where the characters ‘I’, ‘V’, ‘X’, ‘L’, ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘M’ mean 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000.
- The debugger is called `yuk`
- jerf 6y agoMakes me want to hook up a simple predictive algorithm such as what is used for online Rock-Paper-Scissor against computers to demonstrate how predictable people can be and add E134 PROGRAMMER'S POLITENESS IS TOO PREDICTABLE Politeness, once made too predictable, is too easily overlooked. This error is caused at compile time if the programmer's politeness level is too easily predicted by the compiler as it encounters each statement in the code.