It's official. I am a total gumby. There are minds out there that are to mine as the entire city of New York is to a house brick and half a bagel. And they're all using APL.
1,250 karma · joined August 12, 2008
Accountants don't like change.
Personally, I can manage it -- knowing about Windows+D, Windows+C and Alt+F4 makes it minimally usable -- but I don't like it.
For all I know, he's probably still working there. The poor, poor bastard.
My second thought was to come here to the comments to see how long it would be before the attempts started.
My third thought was, if you're allowed to use any language at all, I'd go for code golf. Not sure it's possible to do it in fewer characters than:
#!/bin/sh
catWhat I'd really like is some way to sit on an exercise bike (I believe they're called "stationary bikes" in some places) and still be able to use a keyboard and mouse. Not sure how that would work, but if I could figure it out I'd be rich and skinny before you know it!
C:\> TWENTY48
Loading...
Ready.
You are in a darkened room. On the floor in front of
you are sixteen tiles, arranged in a grid. The tiles
are labelled A1, A2, A3, A4, B1 and so on up to D4.
There is a two here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile D3.
> GET ALL
The numbers appear too strongly glued to the tiles.
> INVENTORY
You have a copy of On Lisp by Paul Graham, a thing your
Aunt gave you that you don't know what it is, and a
small leaflet.
> READ ON LISP
Time passes. You have a profound enlightenment experience.
Sadly, this does not help you win the game.
> READ LEAFLET
"WELCOME TO TWENTYFORTYEIGHT!
TWENTYFORTYEIGHT is a game of numbers, addition and high
bits. In it you will explore some of the most tedious
territory ever seen by Hacker News readers. No computer
will be without one!"
> GO LEFT
Some numbers move, and a new number appears!
There is a two here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile C1.
There is a two here, on tile D1. [Footnote 6]
> FOOTNOTE 6
There are no footnotes.
> GO UP
Some numbers move, some change, and some new numbers
appear!
There is a four here, on tile A1.
There is a two here, on tile B1.
There is a two here, on tile D4.
>GO DOWN
Some numbers move, and a new number appears!
There is a four here, on tile C1.
There is a two here, on tile C4.
There is a two here, on tile D4.
There is a two here, on tile D1.
>PANIC
Not surprised.
>QUIT
Amazed you survived this long.
Your score is 4, out of a possible umpty squillion and six.
Good bye!
C:\>
C:\>
C:\> DEL TWENTY48.EXE
C:\>Now, complete this sentence: 2048 on HN will jump the shark when someone posts...
1. The distance between stars is too huge, so there has to be a trick to beating it easily, like FTL travel or wormholes, because otherwise it's just crap.
2. If any supervillains want to destroy the universe, they're too late: it's already been done, and this is all that's left.
Oh. Another fascinating article about Bitcoin, the internet phenomenon that is to cryptography what Ayn Rand is to philosophy.
I'd happily pay for an option to display Hacker News without any articles that reference Bitcoin. I figure I'd get through the feed in half the time...
It's cruel and exaggerated, but like most successful (?) jokes it contains just enough truth.
0 CONSTANT 0
1 CONSTANT 1
-1 CONSTANT -1
const 0 = 0;
const 1 = 1;
const -1 = -1;
1. Read one word, where "word" is literally defined as "a sequence of non-space characters delimited by spaces". Some standard words include DUP 2DROP 1+ - . " and :
2. Attempt to find the word in the dictionary. If found, execute it.
3. If it's not found, attempt to interpret it as a number. If that works, push the number on the stack.
4. If neither 2 nor 3 succeed, emit an error message.
So the reason for defining a constant named "0" is to save time: it's quicker to interpret the word "0" if it's in the dictionary; otherwise you have to search the whole dictionary and then do a text-to-number conversion, which takes too long.
So really it does make sense.
Lesson: learned.