74 pointsby zenincognito2 hours ago9 comments
  • snittyan hour ago
    SIGBOVIK papers are almost always a delight

    EDIT: From their 2026 publication

    >Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for personal use is granted; permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for classroom use is also granted, but seems ill-advised

  • gnabgiban hour ago
    Popular in:

    2024 (515 points, 125 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40197013

    2021 (431 points, 165 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27929730

    • adamrezichan hour ago
      The reply near the top of the 2021 link with the Master Foo koan hits quite a bit differently in the age of vibecoding.
  • layer8an hour ago
    Tangentially related, the only way for a Java properties file to be invalid is if it contains an invalid Unicode escape sequence (“\u” not followed by four digits, and not preceded by an odd number of “\”).
  • zenincognito2 hours ago
    The actual paper is also highly entertaining - https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/2019.pdf
    • 0xbadcafebee16 minutes ago

        The remainder of the valid Perl programs are mostly valid due to a Perl
        language feature that is not commonly present in most programming languages.
        Namely, Perl has a feature called “unquoted strings”, in which a sequence
        of alphanumeric characters by itself is parsed as though it were a quoted string.
        As an example, Figure 5 is read by OCR as the text ME, which evaluates to the
        string “ME” even though the ME isn’t quoted. This would result in a syntax
        error in most other programming languages.
      
        (To be fair to Perl, when perl is run with the -w flag to enable warnings, it does
        helpfully inform the user that at some point in the future, the Perl developers
        will most likely pick gggijgziifiiffif as a new reserved word:
            Unquoted string "gggijgziifiiffif" may clash
            with future reserved word at - line 1.)
    • Amorymeltzer2 hours ago
      In particular, I like "Figure − 3. − 3 ." as a good little easter egg.
  • delichon3 minutes ago
    This seems to imply the possibility of steganographic paint splatter than encodes state secrets or samizdat. Maybe censors will someday demand low entropy graphic designs.
  • brisket_bronson37 minutes ago
    Figure 6 represents the string “gggijgziifiiffif”, which by pure coincidence happens to accurately represent the authors’ verbal reaction upon learning that “unquoted strings” were a feature intentionally included in the Perl language
    • lta27 minutes ago
      I'm afraid I have to tell you you lack the soul of a poet to truly appreciate the brilliant design . Perl is magic (like litteraly). I'm fairly sure it's one of the untold inspiration of the Harry Potter books
      • hluska14 minutes ago
        I really dig your whimsy.
      • bitwize11 minutes ago
        necronomicon, maybe
  • criemen27 minutes ago
    > Apparently in the brave new world of neural nets, Anything Goes™

    Quite some foresight indeed!

  • sadboi_fandangoan hour ago
    Jackson Pollock was writing perl code all along
    • HeckFeckan hour ago
      My Stone Roses album cover is actually a bonus Perl program?