If Programming Languages Were Religions 844
bshell writes "With Christmas around the corner I know we are all thinking about religion, or at least maybe wondering why this one religion dominates the rest for these few weeks. A fellow named Rodrigo Braz Monteiro (amz) posted this list comparing each programming language to a religion. Guaranteed to make you chuckle and generate a good long thread here on slashdot. Great way to pass the time as work winds down this week and we relate to our own programming faiths during this very special time of year. Merry PHPmas." Fortunately Pastafarianism is referenced.
I'm Atheist I suppose. (Score:5, Interesting)
Objective-C isn't in the list. And that makes me happy.
Theologians will disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO,
python is unrestrictive? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was really into the article until I got to that comment. I really like python, but I find it's anything but restrictive. It seems like there's exactly one way to do things in python and if you deviate at all the other python coders will get insanely angry with you.
I find it more restrictive than java. Elegant, but extremely restrictive. It makes me feel boxed in. I prefer languages where you can do things in various different ways depending on your mood and temperament.
Again, I like python very much, but it's not "unrestrictive." That's just silly.
Re:Theologians will disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
The most common equivalent would be like calling the
Also interesting is that you can't really convert to Hinduism (no one knows how), but you can easily form a cult and call yourselves a Hindu ( Mono
Re:If Programming Languages Were Religions? (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you mean "If"?! As a young man, I was saved by the one true C.
Are you sure you can assert that?
No, the 90s where a turbulent time filled with drugs, rock music and Java. I've largely lost my way for the cheap harlot of a language that runs on any platform. In a way, I miss the sharp sting of the preachers segfault against my knuckles, the way I would allocate and deallocate memory night after night over and over. Sometimes I look back and long for the purity that once was ... and curse the Sun Microsystem that lead me astray from the good letter.
Often at home I resolve to code only in an efficient language. But in the morning when I wake up, I take the paycheck and do what greed drives me to do: Java.
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:3, Interesting)
MORE (out of my own creativity - but being an engineer that's not saying much)
BASIC is similar to the caveman religions - early prototypical religions about Sun gods, Thunder gods, and so forth. It's where most programmers start before moving on to more advanced religions.
FORTRAN - like physics problems about "how high does the baseball go when thrown at 1 meter per second", Fortran is a language you learn in college but never use in the real world.
ASSEMBLY is not for the common man, but for the theologians who like to study the esoteric minutiae (was Jesus a god, a human, or both?). Assembly is for programmers who like to control the lowest level of the machine & worship the flow of the bits. Often used as part of the demoscene.
Fortran? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Theologians will disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
One small quibble... (Score:4, Interesting)
"COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today."
COBOL is more likely Freemasonry - While claiming to be born before C and Java(and we ask, 'this is a hard teaching!'), it espouses concepts much more ancient, and as yet not disproven in utility. It works unseen, underpinning most of society, gains little public respect (indeed scorn and distrust), and occasionally becomes noticable, usually in crisis not entirely of its own making. Adherents are dying off, but fear not; COBOL still fills a need, and while many Post-Modern competitors rise and fall, COBOL lives on, doing whatever it does, quietly, efficiently, daring all pretenders to replace it. Many have indeed succumbed. Be wary of annoying this breed. They have access to all your bases.
Re:python is unrestrictive? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you really think it is illogical, then your logic is broken (it can be unambiguously parsed by a computer, this is pretty good evidence that it is logical).
I suspect that you mean it is uncomfortable, or that you prefer a different method.
Re:wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Mmmmmm. Well I suppose I might be burned at the stake for wondering (since I'm an old man with a long memory) why FORTRAN doesn't rate a mention.
It's are no longer trendy, but many of the routines we know and trust (think: the Boeing math library) were built on it.
In the same vein, would it be too much to ask where PL/1 fits in? Back when I was in my 20s, I used to find all sorts of serious syscall routines written in PL/1 on various mainframe systems whose manufacturers are now consigned to history. Anyone remember PRIMOS? GCOS (God's Chosen Operating System)? AOS/VS? For a long time, my whole career revolved around these now obscure operating systems, and it was fun - sort of like being a privateer, never really in the main stream of the industry.
Re:wow (Score:2, Interesting)
quran 8:55 "all non-muslims are the ugliest beasts on earth"
So tell me, is this a lie by allah ? Or is it the truth. If you're truly a muslim obviously you see this as the truth.
So you racist muslims can shut up and crawl into a little shameful hole, along with your god and paedophilic prophet.
Muslims are filthy animals. (please explain why I cannot say and believe that and you muslims can)
Asshole.
Re:wow (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically violence has nothing to do with religion. People will use ANY religion as an excuse to justify their view they they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Imagine if you could present a complete mathematical proof with no wiggle room at all that a particular cultural viewpoint was just plain wrong.
Your average secular Joe might think about it and concede that they were wrong, and something might actually change for the better. Or they might just say "that sounds very nice, but I like my old opinion better".
A theist can stick their fingers in their ears and chant litanies, and is indeed, far more likely to, because their doctrine includes inbuilt mechanisms that tell them to resist all questions and doubts. They might even obey the instructions in their doctrine that tell them to destroy those with world views that conflict with theirs.
A scientist would examine and attempt to verify the other fellows position - and if he was right, may actually thank him for the enlightenment.
Yes, people will do violence for other reasons. But religion is inherently inflexible in a world where the one constant is change, produces a sense of entitlement to use any means - because the end is "Gods Will", and religious texts often contain actual explicit instructions to do violence to individuals and cultures that do not comply.
I do not concur that religion and violence are unassociated.
Re:Why - It's a near copy of Umberto Eco's joke (Score:3, Interesting)
. . . I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
. . . You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions: When it comes down to it, you can decide to ordain women and gays if you want to.
Re:python is unrestrictive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Except, you know, having to make a class just to print out "Hello World".
In contrast to;
print "Hello World"
Java is bogged down in OO, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when you're an OO language.
Re:wow (Score:5, Interesting)
The parent's post might be worded rather harshly and somewhat unfairly, but the general point is valid.
During the Danish cartoon incident, I was quite surprised that the primary reaction of moderate Islam wasn't condemning the violence of their fellow Muslims, but rather insisting that the cartoonist should not have insulted their prophet.
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Interesting)
So you've shown that religion isn't necessary for violence. I don't think that's what anyone is saying. Would you say it's easier or harder to organize a violent effort when religion is involved?
Re:wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone remember Dante's Divine Comedy? It was written in the early 1300s. In it, he had some past popes condemned to hell. They were also expecting the current pope to arrive soon.
If that isn't insulting the pope, I don't know what is. And this was back in the day when the pope had much more authority than now.
His (Dante's) exile from Florence was due to belonging to the wrong political party and not due to his religious beliefs.
Re:Misconceptions. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. Computer languages don't perfectly map to religions. I'm glad someone pointed that out, point by point, with gratuitous condescension.
Re:what the fuck are you talking about? (Score:4, Interesting)
They worship the same damn god.
This is the popular belief, but it doesn't stand up well to academic scrutiny. The Jewish, Muslim, and Christian gods can be traced back to different ancestral deities, which became fused as monotheism (belief in one and only one god) gradually replaced monolatry (belief in many gods, but worship of only one).
The Judaic god is Yahweh. The Muslim god is Allah, formerly El (the etymology survives as Elohim in the Bible, as well as in the names of the archangels, Gabri-El, Rafa-El, Micha-El, Uri-El). El was a sky god, and therefore a king of the gods, like Zeus. (Elohim is a plural form, and probably originally referred to El plus his lesser gods, analogous to the Olympians.) In Judaism, Yahweh took over El's duties either by absorbing a neighbouring tribe that worshipped El, or by the mythological feat of overthrowing El and taking over the King of gods position, as did Zeus, when the Jews had risen to a position of political and military power that clearly signaled the ascendance of Yahweh. In any case, Yahweh absorbed many of the aspects of El, and after several rounds of edits, they came to be referred to interchangeably but not especially consistently in the Old Testament. El survived this fusion outside of Jewish realms, but because of Judaism's superior documentation of the matter, the fusion was accepted by later religions such as Islam.
The Christian god is Jesus, an entirely different figure who took on all of the myths and characteristics of Roman Empire sun gods. Sun gods generally were fathered by the king of the gods, and birthed by a virgin. That meant that Jesus worshipers needed two more gods, a father and virgin mother, to fit the sun god archetype. But the trinity idea didn't work so well with the trendy monotheism thing, and kind of distracted from Jesus himself. After a couple centuries of various heresies, purges, and whatnot, the Christians got it all sorted out: the trinity was really just facets of the same monotheistic god; the Father was the abstracted god in heaven, easily equated with Yahweh-El (or any other local King god, which was how it got sold to the Romans); Jesus was the real manifestation of that God on earth; and the Virgin got booted from the Trinity because there was no room for another god or another person. (Nevertheless, the Virgin cult has survived in many respects to this day.)
Re:wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Like it or not, Muslims are more likely to kill in response to perceived offenses against their religion
I hope you have some numbers to back that one up.
If you're a moderate muslim and you find that offensive, then you need to do two things
Unless you have some figures to back it up, Im a moderate atheist and I find it offensive, as I do all forms of racism.
get over it, since free speech is a right in the U.S.A.
Indeed it is, but as far as I'm aware the US has laws against publishing defamatory statements, and presumable laws against inciting racial hatred. Like I said, it would be good to see your numbers.
and therefore you're likely to find offensive speech living here, or on the internet
And when I do I challenge it.
secondly, you should be decrying the violence promulgated by extremist muslims in the name of Islam. Part of the problem with moderate religionists is that they give cover for the extremists under the umbrella of "respect for religion". If they want their religion to continue getting respect, they need to police their own.
Re:python is unrestrictive? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>> class X(object):
class __metaclass__(type):
def __new__(cls, *arg, **kw):
return "Hej"
>>> X
'Hej'
>>>