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Esoteric .NET Language Challenge

  • Artikel

It's Friday afternoon, I'm bored with "conventional languages" such as C# and VB, so let's play a game! I've got four different code snippets from somewhat esoteric languages. They've only one thing in common - they can all be compiled with a .NET compiler into intermediate language. Can you guess a) what language each is, and b) what the snippets actually do?

I'll reveal the answers and the compilers in a couple of days if there's anything nobody can get! In ascending order of difficulty, then:

Snippet 1

  <%@ page language="#omitted#" %>
 <script runat="server"> 
 OBJECT.
 DATA DIVISION.
 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
 77 FONT-SIZE PIC S9(9) COMP-5.
 END OBJECT.
 </script>
 <% PERFORM VARYING FONT-SIZE FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL FONT-SIZE > 7 %>
 <font size="<%=FONT-SIZE%>">Nostalgia with a disturbingly novel twist...</font> <br>
 <% END-PERFORM. %>

This is fairly straightforward, I think.

Snippet 2

  ! This is the main program
 Program MultiDog 
 use System
 use VirtualDog 
 type (Dog) :: d
 type (Greyhound) :: g
 type (Labrador) :: l 
 call d%RollOver()
 call g%RollOver()
 call l%RollOver()
 end program MultiDog

A little bit less obvious in terms of the language, but its meaning is pretty clear.

Snippet 3

  <%@ page language="#omitted#" %>
 <script runat="server">

 


    </script>
  
    <html>
    <body>
       <H1>Can you guess what I do?</H1>
       <form runat=server>
          <asp:Button id="Pressme" Text="Press Me" runat="server" OnClick="Reverse" />
       </form>;/form>
    </body>
    </html>

In this one, the language is a giveaway but it takes more skill to work out what the code is doing!

Snippet 4

    400 constant bar
 
    : foo \ Performs a mystery operation
      2 
      begin
        over over mod 0= 0=
        rot rot dup >r
        over 2 / > 0=
        rot and r> swap
      while
        1+
      repeat
      over 2 / >
    ;
  
    : main \ Entry point
      ."Values up to " bar . .": "
      limit 1 do
              i foo
              if i . space then
      loop
    ;

This is much harder to get right, I think...

Let the challenge commence :-)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Hi,

    I think number 1) is COBOL, number 2) might be Smalltalk, no idea about the other two though :)

    I havent programmed in either, but I tried googling on the syntax to see what was brought back.
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
  1. COBOL, 3. APL, 4. FORTH

    I think...
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
  1. COBOL 2. FORTRAN 3. APL 4. FORTH
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Educated Guesses
    1) Cobol
    Sets a the font size to 9pt

    2) SETL
    instantiates 3 classes in VirtualDog and makes them roll over :)

    3) APL
    Reverses the Array Args

    4) Forth
    Err ... Some kinda loop :)
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Some of you are doing well at guessing the languages - but still a little way to go in terms of the operations performed by each!
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Thanks Raymond :-) If I've edited that duplicate 2 out once, I've edited it out ten times. There's some funny bug in the HTML editor, I think, as it just wouldn't stick. Hope it's now fixed for good.
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Woohoo,

    1) COBOL : Which is nice. Displays "Nostalgia with a disturbingly novel twist..." in increasing font sizes from 5 to 7. I think 5 is the staring point

    2) Isn't smalltalk, the comments look wrong, and making 3 different types of dog, inherited from the dog class rollover. Where's the "beg for biscuit" method? :) Now the only thing I can remember using ! for comments is Fortran90, so Lahey's fortran.net?

    3) Is APL, and maybe reverses the args on the query string?

    4) Forth. And I only just remember the Jupiter Ace, as the only consumer computer in the early eighties which used forth instead of basic :) Caculating mystery operation on all values up to 400. Aggh, stack manipulation
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Somebody should implement INTERCAL.NET
  • Anonymous
    October 01, 2004
    Looks like others beat me to it. The only one I know is number 2. It's Fortran. Though I never use FORTRAN or Fortran professionally it's the first "real" language I used so I've been keeping an eye on it for years. Maybe someday I'll get a project that requires heavy duty calculations and I'll have an excuse to install my copy of Fortran.NET.
  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2004
    The comment has been removed