Talk:INTERCAL

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[edit] Character name

Oh why oh why is ; called a hybrid? --Ihope127 16:50, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

For yea verily, ; is a combination of a : and a , , eh? —dcclark (talk) 17:10, 1 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] On taunting the reader

Why does the article flirt and tease with the reader by declaiming that INTERCAL is sui generis and then coyly mentioning that "select" operator has precdent- and not telling us what "Select" does? --Maru (talk) Contribs 03:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Added link to BESM-6. --Leob 09:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

"programming language" is redundant; there is nothing else called INTERCAL. There used to be a version of this at INTERCAL (at the same time that this already existed) which was merged with this one, then INTERCAL redirected here. ethan (talk) 03:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support (created) ethan (talk) 03:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

  • Intercal is also short for Intercalibration in obscure circles. I want you to go ahead. -- Perfecto Canada 04:02, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I've completed this move per the discussion here. —Cleared as filed. 01:12, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] At first glance

In the paragraph detailing the change from EBCDIC to ASCII, "substitutions for two characters had to be made: $ substituted for ¢ as the mingle operator [...] and ? was substituted for ∀ as the unary exclusive-or operator". As far as i know, the XOR operator is binary, not unary. -- Jokes Free4Me 13:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Nope, INTERCAL's XOR (as well as its AND and OR) are unary. You're probably better off not knowing how that's possible. -- 171.64.71.123 00:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, does PLEASE DO differ in any way from DO? :-) -- Jokes Free4Me 13:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Only in that the compiler will reject a program that uses either form too exclusively. -- 171.64.71.123 00:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible "See also"

I'm not familiar enough with INTERCAL to know if this would be an appropriate "See also", but someone else might wish to create a "See also" section with a link to Mornington Crescent (game). --Icarus 05:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other features

Where are the classes and lectures? How about backtracking Intercal? Shinobu 07:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

This is probably too detailed and too badly sourced for Wikipedia, but you can find some relevant external links at [1] (classes and lectures) and [2] (backtracking). --ais523 08:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo citation?

What sort of citation were you looking for? That Jimbo was a co-author? That his nickname is Jimbo? That Don Woods was an adventure author (that's in the linked article)? That this is a photo of Jim? That M is his middle initial? That he's less famous than Don? I took the tag out pending clarification of what you're asking for. Oh, I see you already made the caption humorless, so there's nothing left to cite. If you're still unsure who wrote intercal, see the reference manual or the lead sentence. Notice that it is not the musician James Lyon previously linked. Dicklyon 16:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering what proof there was that it was a photo of Jimbo, but since tagging it I've realised why that would be hard to find and unneccessary, but didn't get round to taking the tag off. I know where to find proof that he created INTERCAL (yes, it's in the manual...). I didn't know about the nickname (it's the sort of thing that sets off alarm bells, because Jimbo is the common nickname for the founder of Wikipedia). I'm sorry for removing the humour from the caption, but it's hard to strike a balance between the irreverence needed for INTERCAL and the seriousness needed for an encyclopedia; feel free to make it a bit funnier again. 'Less famous' would almost certainly spark lots of debate about its appropriateness if more people watched this article. Sorry about that! --ais523 08:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Na, you've convinced me. I've reverted all changes I made to the caption. --ais523 08:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apple leaked source code to Microsoft in INTERCAL

According to a recent blog post, Apple discovered that Microsoft had planted a spy in their organisation, and deliberately leaked a copy of obsolete System 7 source code, machine-translated to INTERCAL, claiming it was the latest build of OS X 10.2. Bill Gates initially fell for the trick and seriously told his programmers to incorporate the INTERCAL code into Windows Vista. JIP | Talk 05:39, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Due to INTERCAL's limited I/O capabilities, this seems unlikely. I can't imagine anyone writing an OS in INTERCAL-72, and neither C-INTERCAL or CLC-INTERCAL can do graphics as far as I know, so presumably this is a new secret flavour of INTERCAL? --ais523 09:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it seems pretty clear that the blog was meant to be a joke. This is probably why blogs aren't considered reliable sources; I'd recommend not putting this information in the article. --ais523 12:50, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bhatele and Satyarth reference

Dick, why do you consider the following to be a "perfectly sensible observation on a reference about INTERCAL"?

Other authors seem to have missed the joke. In one report, INTERCAL is described as an instructional language, with the further remark that "INTERCAL was the only one developed for general use like our language CAL."

This paper is not about INTERCAL, it just makes a passing reference to it. We are only using it to demonstrate that some people have missed that INTERCAL is a joke, but this is original research because it draws a novel conclusion from the source. What we would need is a published source saying that Bhatele and Satyarth's reference of INTERCAL shows that they missed the joke. Furthermore, the Bhatele and Satyarth paper, as far as I can tell (and I hadn't noticed this before) appears to be self-published, and not by well-known professional researchers, which makes it unusable as a reference here (see WP:V#SELF). --Allen 19:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is a perfectly sensible observation about some authors missing the joke of INTERCAL. For the way it's used, there's no presumption of or call for "reliability", so the fact that it's self-published is moot. See what others think about whether such a simple observation should be stricken as "OR". Seems to me that an article about INTERCAL is itself in danger of missing the joke if such guidelines are taken too seriously. Dicklyon 23:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Every claim on Wikipedia must have been published by a reliable source; it doesn't matter how it's used (that's WP:V, which, like WP:NOR, is not guideline but policy). I understand if you feel that an article about a joke subject should be able to bend Wikipedia policy a bit, but I don't think that's how it works. We'll see how other editors feel about it. If few or none respond in a few days, perhaps we can try soliciting opinions at related article talk pages. --Allen 23:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Thinking about this, the reference doesn't really seem to add any information about the subject; the disputed text is about the reference, rather than about INTERCAL. So it would be appropriate in an article about the reference (although such an article wouldn't itself be appropriate), and might conceivably be appropriate here if another reliable source about INTERCAL mentioned the reference as being an example of something 'missing the joke'. An article about a joke doesn't necessarily have to be humourous; in fact, with something with as long a history as INTERCAL, it has been put to many legitimate uses (probably for not-very-good reasons), and a perfectly serious article can be written. (I wrote parts of the corresponding article at Esolang; although Esolang has different policies and a different style, it's article isn't humourous either.) The basic problem is that the fact that at least one author missed the joke isn't particularly notable, in the sense that it can't be verified (it's kind of obvious from the linked source, but that's still original research). --ais523 08:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IDE?

I'm looking for a syntax-highlighting IDE as I've been tasked with maintaining INTERCAL code and am having trouble not making mistakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.51.122.24 (talk) 15:07, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

C-INTERCAL includes syntax-highlighting code for Emacs in the distribution with recent versions, available from http://intercal.freeshell.org. (By the way, I'd like to add that link to the article, but have a conflict of interest with respect to it; if other users think it's appropriate, please add it. It's the current home page for the two major currently-maintained INTERCAL implementations; the home page given in the article is an older one.) --ais523 22:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)