LAST LAUGH

LOST IN (CODING) TRANSLATION

WRITER HANS MACKENZIE MAIN TRIES HIS HAND AT CODING LANGUAGE, BUT JUST CAN’T SEEM TO GET PAST THE NAMES

I’m not a coder. I don’t know my loops from my micro: bits, and when it comes to deciphering the library that facilitates the training of machine learning models and neural networks called TensorFlow (I looked all of that up), you will most probably find me curled up in the foetal position under attack from my own overloaded neural networks. But I do like languages and the names of the various coding languages (there are about as many different languages as there are countries in the world) fascinate me. It is as if the geniuses who write code put as much thought into naming their strange dialects as they did in developing them. Having said that, there is a code out there called HTML, which, for my money, is not a proper name for a coding language. The creators of HTML seem to have taken the first four letters of their code as its name.

Where is the effort, guys? Where is the love? Names are terms of endearment, are they not? More than that, they speak to the very identity – the very meaning – of the person, place or thing to which they are attached to. A name must be given great thought and attention – it can make or break a person (or a code), reverberating through the ages, an epithet of utmost and undeniable … I’m getting carried away. My apologies. Without any further ado, here, in a very particular order, are the coding language names I rate the most – and the least. JavaScript is my #1. Writing JavaScript, I imagine a slowly bronzing coder composing row after row of code while lying on a deckchair on a pristine white beach on the spectacular island of Java sipping on a glass of ice-cold Java coffee; the ice cubes making the gentlest of clinking sounds while the waves slowly roll in.

GroovyBeans is my #2 all-time favourite name for a coding language. I imagine the room where coders sit to write GroovyBeans to have a disco ball and a small dancefloor where those coders who are stuck can shake loose new ideas to the rhythm of the Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive.

Sadly, that brings us to the end of my favourite names. For the ones I’m not that crazy about, let’s start with the letters. As mentioned earlier, I find HTML to be a lazy attempt. If you’re going to go to the trouble of writing excellent code, why not have that extra espresso and come up with a fun name for it. HTML doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, either. And while we’re on nonsensical series of letters, let’s consider CSS. Here it’s as if the techies who came up with what I gather is a smooth coding language (the last S stands for Stylesheets, apparently) didn’t even try to give their creation a bit of an edge.

My fourth-least favourite name for a coding language is Assembly Language. Sounds like the work of a teacher’s pet, doesn’t it? Visual Basic is next – the third-least favourite – and here I imagine a class of one-year-olds coding to their hearts content using the easiest language out there. And then there’s Rust, my second-least favourite which, frankly, sounds like a code that’s come to a complete standstill.

Drumroll, please. We’ve reached the top of the pile: Python. I can’t imagine learning Python. In fact, I can’t see getting anywhere near it. The language of Python was designed by Guido van Rossum who, going by his photo on Wikipedia, might very well have a terrarium at home with pythons crawling around in it. Its most basic instruction is print(‘Hello, world!’), which is perhaps not all that bad, but, and allow me to stretch my coding legs here, would it not be better to instruct anyone dealing with this code to first find”anti-venom {incupboard, ‘inject’, Immediately} *= survival? Just a thought.

PM

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