What Would Babbage Do?

February 22, 2012 2:24 AM

If PHP Were British. (via an Ars comment.)
posted by veedubya (95 comments total)

A curate's egg, but he almost provoked a LOL (or rather, an Audible Chuckle) with the case statement.
posted by Decani at 2:51 AM on February 22 [4 favorites]

I'd suggest that the article might be more appropriately entitled "Were PHP British" but, of course, I wouldn't like to make a fuss.
posted by pompomtom at 2:55 AM on February 22 [28 favorites]

Indeed, pompomtom. Mustn't grumble.
posted by Decani at 3:01 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]

Racist.
posted by Segundus at 3:11 AM on February 22 [8 favorites]

The exception handling "translation" really got me cracking up.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 3:13 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

Another slap in Worf's face - rewriting a language to fit a proper base language? Why not Perl written in Klingon?

use Lingua::tlhInganHol::yIghun;

<>> tIghItlh!

{
wa' yIQong!
Dotlh 'oH yIHoH yInob
qoj 'oH yIHegh jay'!
yIghItlh!
} jaghmey tIqel!
posted by alex_skazat at 3:28 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]

I agree entirely with his cause.

The only problem is, that his deacronymisation (waddayamean that's not a word?) needs to go further.

PHP should be PHP Hypertext Preprocessor.
I mean, PHP Hypertext Preprocessor Hypertext Preprocessor.
Erm... PHP Hypertext Preprocessor Hypertext Preprocessor Hypertext Preprocessor...

Can we go back to calling it Personal Homepage Processor...?
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 3:32 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Why not Perl written in Klingon?

Well, it makes as much sense as Perl written in English...
posted by sodium lights the horizon at 3:33 AM on February 22 [21 favorites]

Hmm. What about a dialect of J written in concise, easy-to-understand Ithkuil?
posted by Zarkonnen at 3:34 AM on February 22

Lazy collection of British stereotypes is lazy.

I say, shall we do LISP in Yankee poor people language next?

Or perchance we could do COBOL in hepcat jazzspeak?
posted by Happy Dave at 3:34 AM on February 22 [8 favorites]

Lazy collection of British stereotypes is lazy.

Indeed, I nearly spat out my tea and crumpets and my frigid wife is passive–aggressively talking about the poverty of our sex life. Bad teeth, bad food, and something about a thatched cottage and country lanes.
posted by Jehan at 3:50 AM on February 22 [9 favorites]

Happy Dave: "Or perchance we could do COBOL in hepcat jazzspeak?"

I would read this.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:53 AM on February 22

saystuffonthescreen 'Ayup'

put_the_bloody_string_back_when_you're_finished()
check_if_that_number_is_a_proper_one()
variable_dump_haha_poo()
does_this_weird_combination_of_letters_and_stuff_match_t'other_ones()

if (£check_thingy_against_other_thingy) {
// do_stuff
} if_it_isn't_that {
// do_some_other_stuff
}

try_this_thing {
// Code here
} bollocks_it_doesn't_work (Exception £e) {
// Pub anyone?
saystuffonthescreen('We buggered up, sorry.');
}


better?
posted by pmcp at 4:02 AM on February 22 [17 favorites]

"Text speak" is unheard of on the streets of London, as the natural ingrained British grammarian simply refuses to stoop to sending messages of the "c u soon traffic kthxbye" variety, instead proferring something altogether more elegant

Oh Jesus.

I want to find the person who actually said 'Hashtag banter!' out loud in the pub I was in on Saturday, butcher them, and post them to the person who owns The Big Book Of British Stereotypes that was used to write this post.
posted by mippy at 4:16 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]

uhh... kinda funny? I assume that someone will implement this... so that's good.
posted by ph00dz at 4:16 AM on February 22

"Public" and "Private", in the British class system, are often synonymous (see, for example, school system nomenclature),

No they aren't.

US public schools = state schools.

US private schools = private schools

US fancy prep schools where people wear blazers, go rowing and skip merrily into Stanford or Yale = public schools.
posted by mippy at 4:18 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

You really can't stereotype brits. They are still using monotypes in most of the country outside of London.
posted by srboisvert at 4:19 AM on February 22 [5 favorites]

Jesus, you people.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:38 AM on February 22

The "How_About/perhaps/splendid!" case syntax had me howling. They should have used "sod_off" instead of "Cheerio!" tho.

I say, shall we do LISP in Yankee poor people language next?

(dude.[andstuff])))))))))) - This actually compiles a flight sim. Hmm. I think the problem is that it looks and acts like regular LISP.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:46 AM on February 22

Jesus, you people.

Metamorphorical Filtration certainly can excessively cogitate on a dish of haricots.
posted by rory at 4:53 AM on February 22

I propose a British replacement for Java called EarlGrey.
posted by pmcp at 5:02 AM on February 22 [16 favorites]

my nipples explode with delight.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:06 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

Speaking as a Londoner, I don't see this as too different from say, rewriting a language so that every method name is an anagram of something. It's just defining a ruleset that is easy to communicate (cartoon Englishman) and then playing in it.
posted by lucidium at 5:10 AM on February 22

Is there a British version of LOLCode?
posted by MtDewd at 5:26 AM on February 22

What's really offensive is that he equates Canadian English with American English in a manner that suggests here he's not taking the piss. I'm assuming since he's been there since high school Lerdorf is going to be pretty close to the local patois.

Its kind of too bad this wasn't a realer article about dialectic variation's impact on programming languages because that'd hit two of my sweet spots. Variations within the realm of post-Imperial Commonwealths are kind of interesting but I'm most fascinated by English when processed through other linguistic filters. Its interesting to hear how it can become reinflected and restructured. There seems to be a kind of strict, stripped-down version spoken amongst European travellers that is super interesting.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 5:43 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

So I opened this thread thinking 'Ah, a British version...wonder which part of Britain's rich linguistic heritage is this going to riff on? Edinburgh? Newcastle? Cardiff? Liverpool? Maybe the yummy mummies of Islington, or the folk over in Belfast? Maybe even the bizarre mangled text speak you can find on any random Bebo page? Oh. Oh, I see. It's some kind of Jeeves and Wooster argot that nobody has spoken outside of a drawing room in 1902. *searches for the relevant flag for horrid, cliched stereotypes*...'
posted by mippy at 5:44 AM on February 22 [6 favorites]

"Text speak" is unheard of on the streets of London

Pretty sure it was invented on the streets of London.
posted by Artw at 5:48 AM on February 22

Yeah, it was slow to catch on in the US - something like only 20% of messages used in David Crystal's study on text speak were written in it - possibly because texting took longer to take off over there. Seriously, kids were being told off for writing their exam papers in it a decade ago. If you've worked in HR or a temp agency in the UK over the past ten years, it doesn't come as a shock.

What I love is when people write text speak in dialect. My nephew, from Blackburn, writes 'alright' as 'oreyt', which is what it sounds like read out loud in his accent. There's also an Egyptian (I think) version which uses so many numbers that it looks like alphanumeric code.
posted by mippy at 5:56 AM on February 22

Searches for the relevant flag for horrid, cliched stereotypes

Oh, no, someone is perpetuating the stereotype that British are polite and eloquent... the horror! Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses "Cheerio" anymore, and never in the history of England did anyone ever use the word "Splendid," this is a terrible national insult.

Next, we will tackle the terrible class-injustice by shaking our heads at people who pronounce the "ing" at the end of words as "ing" instead of "in."
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:58 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

I was about to snark until I saw the case-when "translations", at which point I started smirking. :)
posted by the cydonian at 6:02 AM on February 22

Not to spoil anyones lazy stereotype fun, but really I think for this to work it either needs to be really spot on and well observed, or just ludicrously off by a wide margin... This doesn't really do either, so it just sounds like one of those steampunk idiots trying to be Britishy.
posted by Artw at 6:05 AM on February 22 [4 favorites]

Oh, no, someone is perpetuating the stereotype that British are polite and eloquent... the horror! Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses "Cheerio" anymore, and never in the history of England did anyone ever use the word "Splendid," this is a terrible national insult.

Howdy pardner! I dang near spat out me tobaccy when I seed those Brits and their ornery complainin bout such purdy words!
posted by Jehan at 6:15 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I'm not even British and this just reminds me of Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent in Mary Poppins.

Although I think I may start referring to if/else blocks as perhaps/otherwise blocks from now on.
posted by usonian at 6:16 AM on February 22

Howdy pardner! I dang near spat out me tobaccy when I seed those Brits and their ornery complainin bout such purdy words!

Thank ye, sherrif. Naw if ye don't be mindin', I'm off to see the mountain folk for some fresh taters afore I drive to the seven-eleven to buy a pre-dinner package of 125 doughnuts in my SUV. Yee-haw and god bless America!
posted by mippy at 6:24 AM on February 22

As the original author (Good Morrow, MeFi!), I resent the implication that I resorted to lazy stereotyping. It's a completely accurate assessment, but I don't have to like it.
posted by DaveChild at 6:26 AM on February 22 [27 favorites]

At least he used the "u" correctly. Toodles!
posted by arcticseal at 6:26 AM on February 22

Next, we will tackle the terrible class-injustice by shaking our heads at people who pronounce the "ing" at the end of words as "ing" instead of "in."

Whaa? Pronouncing 'in' is the non-RP way to do it - the lower-class way, if you like. The Queen will never ever drop the G - though as she speaks pretty much an accent of her own, old-school newsreaders are probably a better example. Speakers of estuary dialects (if you've seen any shows set in London over the past 10 years, it's the one that sounds a bit like Cockney, or in other words, The Only Way Is Essex) drop the 'g', as do people from all over t'North. Not saying this to be snarky, but I'm curious as to what you mean by this sentence. Do they drop the G in American English? I am v.confused.
posted by mippy at 6:28 AM on February 22

DaveChild - I am literally swigging tea as I type. Sorry, I, and many other fine folk of Britain, get really really irritated by the idea that we all speak like a) Cockneys b) Bertie Wooster. It brings on a bit of a sense of humour faliure.
posted by mippy at 6:30 AM on February 22

mippy - would it help you to know that I, also, am British and drinking tea at this very moment?
posted by DaveChild at 6:32 AM on February 22 [4 favorites]

Are you guys fighting? It's hard to tell.
posted by yerfatma at 6:33 AM on February 22 [13 favorites]

Back from the days when code actually was written in British English I always liked the error code "Silly" which could be obtained in BBC Basic when attempting to auto-number in steps of zero.
posted by rongorongo at 6:33 AM on February 22

Yes, DaveChild, but is it PG TIPS? IS IT? IS IT?
posted by mippy at 6:35 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

mippy: Please, it's Yorkshire Tea. Which my butler made for me.
posted by DaveChild at 6:36 AM on February 22 [9 favorites]

Don't mind the snark, Dave. I'm as British as only an expat can be and I enjoyed it no end. Sadly, all too many of the commenters here roam around looking for something to pooh-pooh. I suspect in many cases it's caused by the internalised rage of colonials at how horribly all that independence nonsense turned out for them. Fancy a crumpet?
posted by Busy Old Fool at 6:44 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

For one thing, a Brit language would never use duck typing.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:46 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Everything was funny except the abbreviation expansion. That was merely a very good idea.
posted by DU at 6:50 AM on February 22 [3 favorites]

I don't have no butler, what with being in Clerkenwell an'all.

However, I should probably get off the tea. I've already got upset at someone misusing 'schizophrenic' in an album review which is the other thing that drives me into PRESCRIPTIVIST HULK mode.
posted by mippy at 6:53 AM on February 22

Sorry, but PHP is clearly an acronym for "Predictably Hacked Platform".
posted by cstross at 6:53 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

If the British have a problem with the dollar sign, they should probably stop claiming to have invented it.
posted by schmod at 6:55 AM on February 22

As the original author (Good Morrow, MeFi!), I resent the implication that I resorted to lazy stereotyping. It's a completely accurate assessment, but I don't have to like it.

It's afternoon. /humorless
posted by Jehan at 7:22 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

I don't have no butler, what with being in Clerkenwell an'all.

What? You're in that London? Watch you don't cut yourself on your monocle or trip up getting out of your gold rolls royce.
posted by pmcp at 7:32 AM on February 22

It's afternoon. /humorless

It's "humourless". /pedantry
posted by DaveChild at 7:41 AM on February 22 [11 favorites]

Howdy pardner! I dang near spat out me tobaccy when I seed those Brits and their ornery complainin bout such purdy words!

You've never actually met anyone from rural Texas, have you? Otherwise you'd know they pronounce it "mah tabacca" and would use the proper "done seen them English types" instead of "seed those Brits."

Get over yourself. If the point of the excercise were "how to program like a Texan," the vernacular you used would be appropriate and funny... if it were "How to Program like an American," and written from a British perspective, it would have been howlingly funny.

Cheerio!

(Englishmen. Complaining about being stereotyped as victorian gentlemen. FFS, it's like a New Englander being offended that someone used a Brahmin accent to typify someone from the Boston instead of mimicking a Southie.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:53 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

love the control structures, my favorite by far being:

 
perchance (£condition) {
}

posted by mcstayinskool at 8:00 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

I say, lighten up! I'm sure no-one, in the OP or this thread, thinks British people literally talk that way as such (although, really, you've never said cheerio? I have). The "lazy stereotyping" is exactly what's funny.
posted by Drexen at 8:08 AM on February 22

You've never actually met anyone from rural Texas, have you?

Yes, yes I have. He was horrifically obese and never stopped talking about guns. He was also wearing a stars and stripe tshirt and eating a hamburger. And very very stupid.

(Actually, that's not true, but it is howlingly funny to imagine, because lazy stereotypes are the absolute highest form of humor, and the more you repeat them the truer and funnier they become. Indeed, we're almost at critical mass for English stereotypes, and should any US folk utter "God Save the Queen, guv'nor" in a Cockney accent one more time, the world will literally explode with mirth as though it was the funniest thing ever said in the history of funny things that people say.)
posted by Jehan at 8:12 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Hey, cheer up Jehan, it's the Jubilee soon. We get an extra day off! And if last year's wedding is anything to go by, lots of shops will discount things for no apparent reason so you can get your Christmas shopping in early.

(I celebrate monarchy-based events in the same way atheists celebrate Christmas.)
posted by mippy at 8:33 AM on February 22

(FFS, it's like a New Englander being offended that someone used a Brahmin accent to typify someone from the Boston instead of mimicking a Southie.)

No, what you are describing there is the equivalent of this.
posted by mippy at 8:35 AM on February 22

If only PHP 6.0 would have syntax and variable replacements. It would be so so fun to play with!
posted by ericteoh at 8:35 AM on February 22

never in the history of England did anyone ever use the word 'Splendid,'

Mark Knopfler in Dire Straits' "Industrial Disease."
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

If I wrote a comic story in which brits diverted from controversy by apologizing and discussing tea, I'd probably get criticized for dealing in stereotypes. And yet, here we are.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:29 AM on February 22

If I wrote a comic story in which brits diverted from controversy by apologizing and discussing tea, I'd probably get criticized for dealing in stereotypes.

I think the problem is that we see our stereotype more like Arthur Dent from hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy other people see us more like colonial aristocrats.

Mugs of tea? Yes.

Afternoon tea with scones and clotted cream? No.
posted by pmcp at 9:42 AM on February 22

I can't even figure out how to type £.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:49 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

pmcp - it's an ad, but this kind of sums up the glorious naffness of modern Britain. Not a monocle to be found!
posted by mippy at 9:51 AM on February 22

All the people from Texas I have met have been very determined not to live in Texas. What that says about the place I could not say.
posted by Artw at 9:52 AM on February 22

I met a guy from Austin at last year's Indietracks and he seemed to like Austin. He was also amused that I'd heard of Tom Landry, mind.
posted by mippy at 9:59 AM on February 22

I really enjoy this version of exception handling!
posted by CancerMan at 10:06 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Did you know PHP is pronounced "Fap"?
posted by beschizza at 10:08 AM on February 22

PHP isn't British though. It's just insane.
posted by sparkletone at 10:23 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

For some real english you could do worse than read some traditional Essex Haiku.
posted by dng at 10:52 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

seanmpuckett: "For one thing, a Brit language would never use duck typing."

Good thing PHP doesn't have duck typing then.

Both J. Roger Hindley and Robin Milner were British, for whatever that's worth.

Mistaking dynamic typing for duck typing is like mistaking a Big Wheels trike for a Harley Davidson.
posted by idiopath at 11:13 AM on February 22

Mea culpa, I see now that while my favorite Hindley-Milner using language is also duck typed as regards its object system, duck typing and Hindley-Milner typing are two separate beasts. And PHP is actually duck-typed.
posted by idiopath at 11:20 AM on February 22

and should any US folk utter "God Save the Queen, guv'nor" in a Cockney accent one more time


Poor, poor oppressed Englishmen. Those terrible Americans with their stereotypes of the British as people with manners and education are one thin step away from hate speech.

Sorry, but your sense of outraged entitlement is overbearing to the point of insult - past it, actually - to those who have real issues with negative stereotypes.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:27 AM on February 22

I'm sorry, i couldn't quite make out what you said there because you're too stupid and fat from being American. Was it something about Jesus or your need to drive a stupidly large car?
posted by Artw at 11:33 AM on February 22 [7 favorites]

(I'm kidding, of course, that's only really the midwest)
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

I have this sudden urge for tea, and I'm not even British. The hell?
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:47 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

All the people from Texas I have met have been very determined not to live in Texas. What that says about the place I could not say.

It says that in Texas there's a large section of the population that can't conceive of why someone would live outside of Texas, or in fact that there are any other regions on the planet that support human life; and a small group (raises hand) that is dying to get away from those people. Being in Seattle your contacts are with the latter.
posted by furiousthought at 12:01 PM on February 22

British = olden times.
posted by Summer at 12:03 PM on February 22

I hear Austin is nice.
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM on February 22

it's an ad, but this kind of sums up the glorious naffness of modern Britain. Not a monocle to be found!

That sums up nothing but the glorious naffness of appealing to cheap nationalism in advertising. And while we're at it, the BBC can lay off it too.
posted by Summer at 12:12 PM on February 22

Sorry, but your sense of outraged entitlement is overbearing to the point of insult - past it, actually - to those who have real issues with negative stereotypes.

I'm a woman with a serious mental heath condition, so please don't presume I don't know my way round a more damaging stereotype. I can't speak for Jehan, but I don't think anyone is being particularly entitled in saying that the cliched, monocled stereotype is dreadfully dull for those of us who live in the UK. We're a pretty diverse little country, even just considering the accents in which we speak. (I live in Ealing, but I speak more like Daphne Moon than Alec Guinness.) Christ, nobody's suggesting hate speech here. It's just something that pisses us not-so-little Englanders off. S'all.
posted by mippy at 12:14 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Poor, poor oppressed Englishmen. Those terrible Americans with their stereotypes of the British as people with manners and education are one thin step away from hate speech.

Sorry, but your sense of outraged entitlement is overbearing to the point of insult - past it, actually - to those who have real issues with negative stereotypes.

It's weird, you know, that I never called it "hate speech" or even a "negative stereotype", you seem to be reading into my words things I didn't say. Maybe I was being far too subtle, but I was criticizing the laziness and unfunniness of it all.

If anything—and I mean taking as much insult from English stereotyping that I can muster—I'm annoyed that it centers on upper class or Cockney speech, and ignores my existence. Being poor and northern is like living in flyover country for US stereotypes. We're crying out for your attention, if only to cast us all as pigeon fanciers and heavy drinkers with incomprehensible accents. Whippets, pies, grimness, flatcaps "love", coalmines, and Kes are all equally good suggestions. Even southerners can work up a decent stereotype on a bad day, despite being soft nancies that drink flat beer and forever reminisce about how wonderful the Blitz was.
posted by Jehan at 12:19 PM on February 22 [6 favorites]

Wait.

You folks are doing it all wrong!

This was supposed to devolve into a heated argument about PHP vs Perl for web-based applications.

The original derail was supposed to happen here.

Can we rewind and get this religious flamewar started correctly?


posted by mmrtnt at 12:38 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

A song about (not) being English
posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Poor, poor oppressed Englishmen. Those terrible Americans with their stereotypes of the British as people with manners and education are one thin step away from hate speech.

Sorry, but your sense of outraged entitlement is overbearing to the point of insult - past it, actually - to those who have real issues with negative stereotypes.

Seeing as Americans get to complain about Anti-Americanism, I think we need to invent a nice term for people not treating us with the respect we so obviously deserve. Unfortunately, antiangloism just sounds like some sort of painful disease.

Which might be pretty apt I suppose
posted by dng at 1:41 PM on February 22 [1 favorite]

Mippy, Jehan, I don't know why you're being so apologetic. I'm guessing you wouldn't go around doing a ridiculous Inspector Clouseau accent in front of French people. Lazy stereotypes are ignorant, doesn't matter if it's us, Americans, Indonesians or Tasmanians on the receiving end.
posted by Summer at 1:43 PM on February 22

I seem to have arrived late, and the site has been slashdotted. Any mirrors/alternatives would be splendid (yes I do use that word in everyday conversation).
posted by fearnothing at 2:09 PM on February 22

As an Englishman living in the US I enjoyed this very much.

Jolly good show chaps.
posted by schwa at 12:10 AM on February 23

What would Henry Hatsworth do?
posted by Quantum's Deadly Fist at 1:45 AM on February 23

I've a problem with the semicolon used in PHP at the end of each statement. Can I suggest that to properly British it up, we use the reserved word "innit".

I'd also like to see "At the end of the day" being used instead of the exception catch keyword.
posted by zoo at 3:15 AM on February 23 [3 favorites]

I LOLed at "on_the_off_chance:" for switch statement.
posted by hellslinger at 10:16 AM on February 23

We're crying out for your attention, if only to cast us all as pigeon fanciers and heavy drinkers with incomprehensible accents. Whippets, pies, grimness, flatcaps "love", coalmines, and Kes are all equally good suggestions. Even southerners can work up a decent stereotype on a bad day, despite being soft nancies that drink flat beer and forever reminisce about how wonderful the Blitz was.

I love this so much and I'm not even sure why. I'm hearing it in Christopher Eccleston's voice.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:03 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]

Nobody, and I mean nobody, uses "Cheerio" anymore

Not true, I'm afraid. There is one British Mefite I won't name that frequently signs out of one of the Mefi-related Minecraft servers with a "cheerio". I saw it. Eh?
posted by Hoopo at 3:14 PM on February 23

Clearly he's fucking with you.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on February 23 [1 favorite]

Typical fackin' septics, can't even slag us off properly.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:14 AM on February 26