The worst programming language ever

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

By chance I stumbled across this Youtube video The worst programming language ever (no, it's not RPL ;-) ). It's a humorous talk about creating the worst ever computer language by throwing in all the bad parts of other languages. A funny way to kill an hour on a grey and cold november afternoon.

Regards
Max

[EugeneNine]

I thought that was (Microsoft's) C#

[teenix]

Try the EDUC-8 home built computer from the 70's, that will twist your brain cells.

cheers

Tony

[Thomas Okken]

(11-15-2021 01:30 AM)EugeneNine Wrote:  I thought that was (Microsoft's) C#

I've done a bit of C# development at work, and I thought it was fine.

I'm sure it helps that I'm very familiar with Java. After all, C# is what Microsoft came up with after their attempt to hijack Java from Sun was shot down in court. They realized that Java had major advantages, and so they ended up designing something so similar as to be almost indistinguishable.

[Ren]

I didn't finish the video, because of the length, but it was enjoyable.
Was what he said about the origin of Visual Basic true?

IIRC, Ruby on Rails started as an April Fool's joke.

[KeithB]

Of course there are *purposely* pathological languages. MarkCC discusses some. I think the worst might be BrainF**k.

[robve]

Thanks for sharing an entertaining video. I had ignored this video purposely before, thinking it is either uninformative or all about PL/I as a successor to Fortran, COBOL and Algol, the group of early PL that are commonly criticized in university undergraduate programming language courses for various reasons. This post made me reconsider, so I watched it till the end with some amusement.

Why PL/I? PL/I was the language that "combines features of numerous other languages" or "everything for everybody" (great quote from Sebesta). One of the many goals was that "there were to be no reserved words" to make programming "easier". As a consequence programmers could write code like this line that actually compiles and runs:

IF ELSE THEN ELSE=THEN ELSE THEN=ELSE

Take that RPL!

- Rob

[bbergman]

(11-15-2021 02:29 PM)Ren Wrote:  Was what he said about the origin of Visual Basic true?

I don't ever remember hearing that about VB, but it's possible. It's clear that wasn't one of his favorites, but there were/are far worse languages out there. More plausible was the fact that he worked for one of the biggest competitors to VB (SQLWindows), and he probably didn't like the fact that VB survived, and SQLWindows didn't. Even PowerBuilder did better.

I sense some sour grapes...

[David Hayden]

My votes for worst programming languages:

APL: A wonderfully expressive language, but it's basically write-only. reading an APL program is torture.

BCPL. Data is untyped. Operators are typed. So a variable is just a blob and if you want to add two integers you say blob (integer +) blob. It's up to you to ensure that the blobs are integers.

BCPL highlights something curious: at the machine code level, computers work like that: data (memory) has no type, but operators do. It's completely the opposite in high level languages where you specify your data's type and then "+" means different things depending on what type of data it's operating on.

Notice that syRPL is in between. Both data and operators are typed. It's up to the programmer to ensure that "integer add" (#+) is used with actual integers as arguments.

[Felix Gross]

I really recommend the article by Mateas, Montfort: A Box, Darkly:
Obfuscation, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics. In Proceedings of the 6th Digital Arts and Culture Conference, IT University of Copenhagen, 1-3 Dec 2005, pp. 144-153 (google it).

I covers inter alia Brainf***k. Here is a Hello World program in that wonderful language:

++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<>++.>+.++
+++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.---
-----.>+.>.

INTERCAL is also entertaining.

[Ren]

(11-19-2021 10:22 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  Notice that syRPL is in between. Both data and operators are typed. It's up to the programmer to ensure that "integer add" (#+) is used with actual integers as arguments.

Typing both data and operators sounds like more work (I'm lazy), but it also seems like a more secure way to do it (I like security, but not at the expense of freedom! B^)

[floppy]

(11-14-2021 04:57 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello!

By chance I stumbled across this Youtube video The worst programming language ever (no, it's not RPL ;-) ). It's a humorous talk about creating the worst ever computer language by throwing in all the bad parts of other languages. A funny way to kill an hour on a grey and cold november afternoon.

Regards
Max

video not accessible

[Albert Chan]

A simple youtube search, it is still available.

[KeithB]

I could not view it because I do not have a YouTube Account.

[rprosperi]

(11-22-2021 08:41 PM)KeithB Wrote:  I could not view it because I do not have a YouTube Account.

You don't need a YT account (which is actually a google account) to view this, or most other videos there. In fact, don't sign-in when you go there, unless you want to help google make $ advertising to you...

[Garth Wilson]

I don't have a YouTube account either; but I learn lots from YouTube videos every day.

[John Smitherman]

My vote for the worst is COBOL.

[floppy]

(11-25-2021 02:46 PM)John Smitherman Wrote:  My vote for the worst is COBOL.

My neighbour who is a programmer is still working in banking and insurance companies in Germany because they still have big computers working with COBOL. He moves next to pension.
He earns approx 100k Eur per year. So, working with the bad can be good
;-)
(I never has done COBOL)

And: I recommend people should start to learn COBOL because these companies are probably ready to pay a high amount of money to young programmers doing that (for few more years. how long? dont know. probably till when the banks will invest huge amount of money for migrating the customer database from mainframe computers working with COBOL into modern less sure systems..).

[Dave Frederickson]

Whitespace. Uses only space, tab, and LF characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace..._language)

[floppy]

The video is hilarous. Thanks for sharing.
This give the evidence that programming language should be revisited with communication psychologists and UX developpers (for the programmers)