Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

[paperoceans]

Probably isn't the literal meaning of 'personality test'. But you're judging others! It counts
Quiz here.

Can you tell a coder from a cannibal? Try to work out which of the following spent their time hacking computers, and which preferred hacking away at corpses instead.

5/10
Not bad, but it might be best to avoid a career in either law enforcement or I.T. recruitment.

 

[Phantonym]

This was fun.

10/10

Apparently, I'd spot Hannibal Lecter in seconds at an Open Source conference. And yeah, my liver is safe.

 

[LostInNerSpace]

How hard would you say it is to invent a programming language?

 

[LostInNerSpace]

Looks like I'll have to answer my own question. It was a loaded question. I intentionally asked how HARD it would be to invent a programming language. It might have seemed different if I had asked how EASY it would be.

It is conceptually not that hard. There are two main issues. Designing the language and implementing it. Machine code is extremely verbose and not at all intuitive, but conceptually quite simple. High level languages just translate high level human readable constructs into machine code. Modern languages can be extremely complex but have been in development for many years. If you want to create a new language today there are many tools to aid you. Even if you were to implement from scratch your own compiler, optimizer and linker, it's just a matter of starting simple and continually building on those foundations. You would be amazed at what you are capable of. Same applies to anything. It's just a matter of getting over the initial perception hurdle.

 

[Phantonym]

So, LostInNerSpace, are you implying that becoming a serial killer is:

just a matter of getting over the initial perception hurdle.

?

 

[LostInNerSpace]

No but that might not be far from the truth. I've been watching a lot of war documentaries lately. They are a reminder of what people can be capable of.

 

[Jaguar]

That screaming chain-saw shit was hilarious. I got 9/10.

 

[Ginkgo]

Haha, 6/10.

I think the moral of the exercise was that there was no arbitrary way to distinguish a serial killer from a programming language inventor.