6 ms·

Nerd quiz - Can you name a programming language for every letter of the alphabet?

9 points by kvogt 19y ago

kvogt 19y ago
Justin.tv crew came up with 20.
cperciva 19y ago
Off the top of my head: Ada, BCPL, C, Delphi, Erlang, Fortran, Godel, Haskell, Intercal, Java, K (if hypothetical languages count? This is a project by some FreeBSD developers to produce a more powerful version of C designed for kernel programming), Logo, Maple, N??, Occam, Pascal, Q??, Ratfor, Sed, TeX, U??, Visual Basic (if this counts as a language in itself rather than as a version of BASIC), Whitespace, X??, Yorick, Z?? I guess that's 19-21 out of 26, depending on the exact rules.
- emmett 19y ago
  We couldn't figure out N, U, or Z either. Q is easy - QuickBasic, under the same theory as V. Whitespace - good call! We couldn't think of a W.
  - davidw 19y ago
    UML
    - jey 19y ago
      That's a design language, not a programming language, right? Or is UML actually Turing-complete?
      - davidw 19y ago
        No idea, just thought I'd toss it out there.
        euccastro 19y ago
        Go management!
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubercode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubercode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniface_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniface_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnrealScript_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnrealScript_programming_language (Don't ask me where I got my info)
  - ashu 19y ago
    http://www.nickle.org/ http://www.nickle.org/ Keith Packard has been working on it for a while...
- philh 19y ago
  Newlisp, if we're allowed different lisp dialects. (If not, new challenge: lisp dialect for every letter of the alphabet.)
  - fallintothis 19y ago
    Paul Graham has most of the work done for me: http://paulgraham.com/lisps.html http://paulgraham.com/lisps.html He has A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, S, V, and X - though I certainly can name some dialects of the same letters which are not listed. Not going to really bother on that one, though. This leaves H, Q, R, T, U, W, Y, and Z, of which I can supply Qi ( http://www.lambdassociates.org/ http://www.lambdassociates.org/ ) and T ( http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ ). Bringing the list of unnamed (for me) to: H, R, U, W, Y, Z. That's the best I can do. Anyone else?
SwellJoe 19y ago
Where's the challenge in that? I wanna see a factorial function, iterative and recursive (where applicable), in each. Now that's a nerd. I'm guessing Trevor and rtm could manage about half the alphabet. pg, not a chance, he's too much of a language bigot. I'd be lucky to get through maybe five without consulting a reference of some sort.
- pg 19y ago
  arc, b, c, dylan, erlang, franz lisp, goo, haskell, interlisp, jscheme, kawa, lisp 1.5, maclisp, newlisp, ocaml, perl, qi, ratfor, scheme, t, uci lisp, verilog, waterloo basic, xlisp, yacc, zetalisp (Being a language bigot doesn't constrain you too much if your favorite language is a language-family.)
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    Touché. Once again, age and guile beats (relative) youth, innocence, and a bad haircut.
    - SwellJoe 19y ago
      Touché. Hehehe...Looks like my challenge should have involved multi-byte encodings, if I wanted to pick on pg. ;-)
      - SwellJoe 19y ago
        Argh. You just had to go and ruin a good jab by fixing the problem. ;-) Of course, in the reply page, it's still showing up as "TouchÃ©".
russ 19y ago
APL, Brainfuck, Cobol, D, Erlang, Fortran, Goedel, Haskell, INTERCAL, Javascript, K, Lisp, Matlab, NewtonScript, OCaml, Python, QBasic, Ruby, Smalltalk, TeX, UnrealScript, Verilog, Wierd, XSLT, Yorick, Z++
- shankys 19y ago
  Assembly, Bash, C, Dylan, Emacs Lisp, F#, Groovy, Haskell, Icon, Java, K, Lua, Mathematica, Nemerle, Oz, Perl, Qi, R, Scheme, Tcl, UnrealScript, VRML, Whitespace, XQuery, Yorick, Z++ (I tried to pick different PLs than russ if I could think of one, though I admit I didn't know of Yorick or Z++)
  - dfranke 19y ago
    Arc, Befunge, C++, Delphi, ECMAScript, FORTH, Guile, Hugo, IDL, J#, Ksh, Lex, Maple, nroff, Octave, PHP, QLISP, RPAL, SQL, TrueBasic, Unlambda, VHDL, WEB, XUL, yacc, ZZT-OOP.
    - benhoyt 19y ago
      ZZT-OOP! Oh, the nostalgia. That was awesome. Well, not the language. Not the IDE. But the whole idea of a game having a built-in programming language. Was it the first of its kind? (Then again, in 1991, I don't suppose it was.) JFYI, FORTH is now usually written Forth. (Like LISP is now normally written Lisp.)
gyro_robo 19y ago
No, but I can P a lot. Python, PHP, Perl, PostScript, PDF, Pascal, Pict, Pike, PL/1, Prolog. Don't you love IBM... Programming Language 1... Operating System 2...
benhoyt 19y ago
What about A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y and Z? Seriously, they're all real single-letter languages (Google for "[letter] programming language" and wade through the results). I knew of only about 5 of them already (B, C, D, E, K). I couldn't find real languages for H, I, O or X.
antirez 19y ago
I failed: A: Ada, B: B, C: C, D: D, E: Erlang, F: Forth, G: Gwbasic, H: Haskell, I: Io, L: Lisp, M: Miranda, N: Newtop Script, O: OCaml, P: Perl, Q: Qbasic, R: Ruby, S: Scheme, T: Tcl, U: ?, V: Visualbasic, Z: ?, X: ?, Y: Yacc, W: ?, K: ?

9 points by kvogt 19y ago

kvogt 19y ago

Justin.tv crew came up with 20.

Off the top of my head: Ada, BCPL, C, Delphi, Erlang, Fortran, Godel, Haskell, Intercal, Java, K (if hypothetical languages count? This is a project by some FreeBSD developers to produce a more powerful version of C designed for kernel programming), Logo, Maple, N??, Occam, Pascal, Q??, Ratfor, Sed, TeX, U??, Visual Basic (if this counts as a language in itself rather than as a version of BASIC), Whitespace, X??, Yorick, Z?? I guess that's 19-21 out of 26, depending on the exact rules.

emmett 19y ago
We couldn't figure out N, U, or Z either. Q is easy - QuickBasic, under the same theory as V. Whitespace - good call! We couldn't think of a W.
- davidw 19y ago
  UML
  - jey 19y ago
    That's a design language, not a programming language, right? Or is UML actually Turing-complete?
    - davidw 19y ago
      No idea, just thought I'd toss it out there.
      - euccastro 19y ago
        Go management!
- mynameishere 19y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicon_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubercode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubercode http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniface_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniface_%28programming_language%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnrealScript_programming_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnrealScript_programming_language (Don't ask me where I got my info)
- ashu 19y ago
  http://www.nickle.org/ http://www.nickle.org/ Keith Packard has been working on it for a while...
philh 19y ago
Newlisp, if we're allowed different lisp dialects. (If not, new challenge: lisp dialect for every letter of the alphabet.)
- fallintothis 19y ago
  Paul Graham has most of the work done for me: http://paulgraham.com/lisps.html http://paulgraham.com/lisps.html He has A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, S, V, and X - though I certainly can name some dialects of the same letters which are not listed. Not going to really bother on that one, though. This leaves H, Q, R, T, U, W, Y, and Z, of which I can supply Qi ( http://www.lambdassociates.org/ http://www.lambdassociates.org/ ) and T ( http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ ). Bringing the list of unnamed (for me) to: H, R, U, W, Y, Z. That's the best I can do. Anyone else?

SwellJoe 19y ago

Where's the challenge in that? I wanna see a factorial function, iterative and recursive (where applicable), in each. Now that's a nerd. I'm guessing Trevor and rtm could manage about half the alphabet. pg, not a chance, he's too much of a language bigot. I'd be lucky to get through maybe five without consulting a reference of some sort.

pg 19y ago
arc, b, c, dylan, erlang, franz lisp, goo, haskell, interlisp, jscheme, kawa, lisp 1.5, maclisp, newlisp, ocaml, perl, qi, ratfor, scheme, t, uci lisp, verilog, waterloo basic, xlisp, yacc, zetalisp (Being a language bigot doesn't constrain you too much if your favorite language is a language-family.)
- SwellJoe 19y ago
  Touché. Once again, age and guile beats (relative) youth, innocence, and a bad haircut.
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    Touché. Hehehe...Looks like my challenge should have involved multi-byte encodings, if I wanted to pick on pg. ;-)
    - SwellJoe 19y ago
      Argh. You just had to go and ruin a good jab by fixing the problem. ;-) Of course, in the reply page, it's still showing up as "TouchÃ©".

russ 19y ago

APL, Brainfuck, Cobol, D, Erlang, Fortran, Goedel, Haskell, INTERCAL, Javascript, K, Lisp, Matlab, NewtonScript, OCaml, Python, QBasic, Ruby, Smalltalk, TeX, UnrealScript, Verilog, Wierd, XSLT, Yorick, Z++

shankys 19y ago
Assembly, Bash, C, Dylan, Emacs Lisp, F#, Groovy, Haskell, Icon, Java, K, Lua, Mathematica, Nemerle, Oz, Perl, Qi, R, Scheme, Tcl, UnrealScript, VRML, Whitespace, XQuery, Yorick, Z++ (I tried to pick different PLs than russ if I could think of one, though I admit I didn't know of Yorick or Z++)
- dfranke 19y ago
  Arc, Befunge, C++, Delphi, ECMAScript, FORTH, Guile, Hugo, IDL, J#, Ksh, Lex, Maple, nroff, Octave, PHP, QLISP, RPAL, SQL, TrueBasic, Unlambda, VHDL, WEB, XUL, yacc, ZZT-OOP.
  - benhoyt 19y ago
    ZZT-OOP! Oh, the nostalgia. That was awesome. Well, not the language. Not the IDE. But the whole idea of a game having a built-in programming language. Was it the first of its kind? (Then again, in 1991, I don't suppose it was.) JFYI, FORTH is now usually written Forth. (Like LISP is now normally written Lisp.)

gyro_robo 19y ago

No, but I can P a lot. Python, PHP, Perl, PostScript, PDF, Pascal, Pict, Pike, PL/1, Prolog. Don't you love IBM... Programming Language 1... Operating System 2...

benhoyt 19y ago

What about A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y and Z? Seriously, they're all real single-letter languages (Google for "[letter] programming language" and wade through the results). I knew of only about 5 of them already (B, C, D, E, K). I couldn't find real languages for H, I, O or X.

antirez 19y ago

I failed: A: Ada, B: B, C: C, D: D, E: Erlang, F: Forth, G: Gwbasic, H: Haskell, I: Io, L: Lisp, M: Miranda, N: Newtop Script, O: OCaml, P: Perl, Q: Qbasic, R: Ruby, S: Scheme, T: Tcl, U: ?, V: Visualbasic, Z: ?, X: ?, Y: Yacc, W: ?, K: ?