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Comment by jpeterson | Hacker News Reader

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jpeterson·

Maybe I'm just too old to get this, but why would someone waste their time on this nonsense?

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Probably because he had fun implementing it.

Not everyone has the line between "can" and "should" drawn in the same place.

Aren't they the same line?

You can go rob a bank. However, I don't think you should.

I don't know why I can't reply to icey's response to this, unless it's too much nesting -- the line is the same, but it may exist in a variety of positions on the slider.

I do not believe that he meant you would draw the line for can, and the line for should in different places, rather, that they are simply not in the same place for all people.

In the same vain, I wish I actually had the time to waste on such nonsense.

> In the same vain

I think you meant "in the same vein" ... :)

Yes, I did.

But isn't all nonsense vanity in itself?

It is actually a kind of interesting stack-based grammar. Silly keywords aside I kind of liked learning about how it works and adding new keywords to it.

The fun part is picking really good variable names that make it even more obfuscated to people who don't recognize it. If you don't find it slightly fun, you may not like the IOCCC either.

Some character even got it working for Counter-Strike: Source addons: http://forums.eventscripts.com/viewtopic.php?t=27349

Although it's funny, I think it's a waste of time and talent.

It's someone making an alternate grammar for the Python VM. There's no waste in a learning exercise, even though the (juvenile, topical) humor may have dated itself.

Note to self: in order to not piss off HN readers, make a tutorial/postmortem at the end of the project.

Worry not, it's just a small subset of people here. At least, I hope that most of HN sees the value in doing something just because you want to.

Isn't that obvious?

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