Comments on: return armada;

return armada;

brundlefly — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:27:57 -0800

If Hemingway wrote JavaScript [SFW, despite the .xxx URL]

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:31:46 -0800

Lovely stuff.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:32:14 -0800

(I would have titled it "The Old Man and the C")

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:35:35 -0800

Ha!

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:39:33 -0800

though it's no more C than it is Java and just happens to share some syntactical elements which blah blah blah

By: Egg Shen

Egg Shen — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:47:35 -0800

Henry James was such a bitch.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:51:32 -0800

Who is this "Roberto Bolano"? Do JavaScript people not know ñ exists, or are they just confused because they think it should mean bitwise-not-n?

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:56:15 -0800

A Firewall to Arms? The Snow Effect Without Images of Kilimanjaro? The Sum Also Rises? For Whom the Bell Alerts for Validation? Artw: to my table and a drink then

By: DU

DU — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:00:39 -0800

theories relating to the expressive potential of a limited syntax Surely these types would then be even more attracted to Lisp. Also, the Dickensian solution wasn't nearly long enough. It needs an elderly spinster variable who is never referenced.

By: RogerB

RogerB — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:05:35 -0800

COMPILER WARNING: unreferenced character: 'Bulkington' (alas)

By: Talkie Toaster

Talkie Toaster — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:15:44 -0800

Is this a pointer I see before me The handle to my value? Come, let me dereference thee I have thee not, and yet I see thee still Art thou not, fatal cache line, alias'd To write as to read? Or art thou but A dagger of the MIMD, a false creation, Proceeding from the speed-obsessed icc?

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:19:36 -0800

Who is this "Roberto Bolano"? Do JavaScript people not know ñ exists ....? It's complicated.

By: liamcampbell

liamcampbell — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:00:11 -0800

I am not smart enough to figure out how Italo Calvino would write javascript. Lots of recursion, maybe?

By: whir

whir — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:00:48 -0800

it's his kind of language, am I right? A spare and deceptively plain surface, masking substance and drama beneath. Ha ha ha ha... no, you're not right. I'm not sure how to describe this in literary terms:

for (var key in obj) {
  if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
    doSomething(key, obj[key]);
  }
}

...but "spare" would not be the first thing that came to mind.

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:04:22 -0800

I can't exactly say why, but I imagine Italo Calvino (javascript or not) would accumulate a huge array storing thousands of continuations, and then call them all in parallel threads.

By: Talkie Toaster

Talkie Toaster — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:10:11 -0800

Given that Jorge Luis Borges' short story The Garden of Forking Paths alludes to hypertext decades before its invention, one can only imagine what sort of stories he would have come up with given Javascript. And part of me wants to know what H.P. Lovecraft-style Javascript would look like.

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:17:54 -0800

And part of me wants to know what H.P. Lovecraft-style Javascript would look like. Probably a lot of security scripts so that he could do whitelisting.

By: MysticMCJ

MysticMCJ — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:22:22 -0800

Perl is the true lovecraftian language.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:24:17 -0800

It's basically just one long regex.

By: Talkie Toaster

Talkie Toaster — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:25:48 -0800

MetaFilter: It's basically just one long regex.

By: egypturnash

egypturnash — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:27:31 -0800

I'm now waiting for the Javascript extensions that would allow Shakespeare to write code like this:

folio theSeriesOfFIBONACCI(theSize) {

  //a CALCKULATION in two acts.
  //employ'ng the humourous logick of JAVA-SCRIPTE

  Dramatis Personae:
    theResult,    //an ARRAY to contain THE NUMBERS
    theCounter;   //a NUMBER, serv'nt to the FOR LOOP

  //ACT I: in which a ZERO is added for INITIATION

  //Upon the noble list bestow a zero
   ENTER: theResult = [0];

  //ACT II: a LOOP in which the final TWO NUMBERS are QUEREED and SUMM'D

  //Commence at one and venture o'er the numbers
  for (theCounter = 1; theCounter < theSize; theCounter++) {
    //By divination set adjoining members
    theResult[theCounter] = (theResult[theCounter-1]||1) + theResult[Math.max(0, theCounter-2)];
  }

  //'Tis done, and here's the answer.
  return theResult;

  //[Exuent]
}

By: Doleful Creature

Doleful Creature — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:55:40 -0800

I once wrote an erotic Donald Duck/Mickey Mouse slashfic in the style of Hemingway.

By: Cironian

Cironian — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:03:15 -0800

Indeed Lovecraft predicted regular expressions. That's how you check if the stars are right.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:17:02 -0800

Someone do Joyce or Proust!

By: Jpfed

Jpfed — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:19:10 -0800

egypturnash- not javascript, but close enough.

By: davidjmcgee

davidjmcgee — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:44:04 -0800

I once wrote an erotic Donald Duck/Mickey Mouse slashfic in the style of Hemingway. GO ON.

By: Panjandrum

Panjandrum — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:45:31 -0800

NO. DO NOT.

By: PlusDistance

PlusDistance — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:14:32 -0800

if (to_be)
  suffer(outrageous_fortune[slings && arrows]);
else return 0;

By: braksandwich

braksandwich — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:28:42 -0800

Cormac McCarthy's javascript wouldn't compile

By: rodii

rodii — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:25:09 -0800

"Exuent" :(

By: LogicalDash

LogicalDash — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:27:16 -0800

Javascript never compiles. I guess he's fine, then.

By: djb

djb — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:46:11 -0800

JavaScript? Rubbish. Cultured programmers use the Queen's PHP.

By: madcaptenor

madcaptenor — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:58:42 -0800

I don't see how the Shakespeare code works. What's going on with (theResult[theCounter-1]||1)) ?

By: 23

23 — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:11:09 -0800

You guys know Shakes already has his own language, right?

By: axiom

axiom — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:59:05 -0800

I don't see how the Shakespeare code works. What's going on with (theResult[theCounter-1]||1)) ? That expression takes advantage of the truthiness of 0 and 1; it evaluates to 1 if theResult[theCounter-1] is equal to zero (i.e., the zero 'bestowed' above the for loop). So the first time through the loop that whole line resolves to be: theResult[1] = (1 + 0) The next two it's:

theResult[2] = (1 + 0)
theResult[3] = (1 + 1)

And predictably after that...

By: axiom

axiom — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 20:14:07 -0800

I'm now waiting for the Javascript extensions that would allow Shakespeare to write code like this If you remove the space between 'Dramatis' and 'Personae', put 'var' right after 'DramatisPersonae:', and change 'folio' to 'function', that's perfectly legitimate JavaScript.