Top all-time · #440
James Iry
Personal blog · james-iry.blogspot.comprogramming
James Iry writes One Div Zero, a personal blog at james-iry.blogspot.com about programming. Since 2008, 128 different Hacker News readers have linked it 157 times, most often “A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link James Iry's satirical "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages" as a running joke about language history and the monad line. Many comments quote it as a source for the same jokes.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- One commenter suggests reading it ("you might like to read"); another calls it "a masterpiece"; a third says it is "still my favorite".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
An exploration of software development.
Most-linked posts?
- A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages73 people · 77 mentions · first linked 2009-05-08
- A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2018-02-11
- A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-05-25
- Types (and Languages) à la Chart4 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2010-11-06
- Why C Is Not Assembly3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-09-14
- Erlang Style Actors Are All About Locking (2009)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-06-21
- Type Errors as Warnings3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-06
- Why Eager Languages Don't Have Products and Lazy Languages Don't Have Sums2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-10
- A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-24
- /2007/09/monads-are-elephants-part-1.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-18
What Hacker News says?
The parent may be (I have no idea...) referencing a line from the (hilarious) "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages" [1]. The entry for 1987 is: """ 1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God w…
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “God's Lonely Programmer”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages as a story · 391 points
HN discussionI believe the annals of history say 87 [0] "1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born." [0] - http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Rust for Windows”Submitted A brief, incomplete and mostly wrong history of programming languages as a story · 303 points
HN discussion1964 John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC. 1974 Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964. From A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages. http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009) as a story · 213 points
HN discussionObligatory: https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-... > 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009) as a story · 197 points
HN discussionThe difficulty that I have with his linear generalization is that I strongly agree with some points on both sides - sometimes feeling oppositely strongly about two halfs of the same sentence. Another commenter linked to http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/05/types-la-chart.html which makes the statement that "the design space is very highly dimensioned, perhaps infinitely so". I suspect that the programmer opinion sp…
Comment linking /2010/05/types-la-chart.html
on “Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages as a story · 163 points
HN discussionInteresting positioning of languages: Assembly language: Batshit liberal. Perl, Ruby, PHP, shell-script: Extremist liberal. JavaScript, Visual Basic, Lua: Hardcore liberal. Python, Common Lisp, Smalltalk/Squeak: Liberal. C, Objective-C, Scheme: Moderate-liberal. C++, Java, C#, D, Go: Moderate-conservative. Clojure, Erlang, Pascal: Conservative. Scala, Ada, OCaml, Eiffel: Hardcore conservative. Haskell, SML: Extremis…
Comment linking /2010/05/types-la-chart.html
on “Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009) as a story · 110 points
HN discussion> "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors". Anyone who says that - or anything anywhere close to it - is gatekeeping, no matter how true the statement is. The original attribution of this line about monads comes from the (intentionally) comedic article "A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages", published by James Iry in 2009: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brie…
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Functional programming should be the future of software”Submitted A Brief And Mostly Wrong History Of Programming Languages as a story · 101 points
HN discussionTo understand monads one must first understand monads. I'm not even saying that a bit sarcastically. I've read countless "tutorials" and even tried messing around with Haskell in an attempt to grok monads. According to the link shared by GP comment, my understanding is still completely wrong. There is a reason there is a joke about it. "A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the probleⅿ?" -…
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Haskell Concepts in One Sentence”Submitted Why C Is Not Assembly as a story · 93 points
HN discussionI make languages and I LOLed. Self-awareness, good knowledge of CS history, and a huge heaping helping of humility are all key prerequisites to inventing a language that is even marginally less appalling than all of its predecessors. “You will FAIL” is about the best advice a nascent language designer can receive, and they should embrace it. Also Obligatory: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and…
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Programming Language Checklist”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009) as a story · 70 points
HN discussionAs http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m... put it, “Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.”
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Rust is a hard way to make a web API”Submitted C Is Not Assembly as a story · 31 points
HN discussionI've long been partial to this formulation: > 1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix. Some of us learn to lean to the side right before pulling the trigger... http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “I have no constructor, and I must initialize”Submitted Types (and Languages) à la Chart as a story · 30 points
HN discussionI don't really make dishonest dollars so this is unfamiliar to me but I was under the impression content mills made easily detectable formulaic clickbait "What happened next will surprise you" "a local housemom discovered something" "7 worst celebrity hairstyles" etc... This is decidedly different. Here's some examples: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206 http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/bri…
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Please Don't Say Just Hello In Chat (2013)”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages as a story · 12 points
HN discussionA Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages 1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists. 1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964. http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?”Submitted How To Estimate Software as a story · 11 points
HN discussionInsufficiently C-like languages get ignored, according to: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html?m=1
on “Why Isn't Functional Programming the Norm? [video]”Submitted "Fixing" Groovy as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> 1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix. http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
Comment linking /2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
on “I'll refrain from providing code that involve concepts as you're under 18”Submitted A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
