[HN Gopher] I accidentally a scheme
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       I accidentally a scheme
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 223 points
       Date   : 2023-11-14 04:25 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wingolog.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wingolog.org)
        
       | frognumber wrote:
       | People accidentally a scheme all the time. I first accidentalled
       | a scheme in high school. I learned about S-types, which were to
       | Lisp what JSON is to JavaScript. I made a language around then.
       | Oops.
       | 
       | Some would argue Brendan Eich of Netscape accidentalled a scheme
       | in JavaScript, but others would argue that he didn't. Most
       | accidental schemes are pretty bad, and the original JavaScript
       | fits the bill, or it doesn't, depending on what you think to be a
       | scheme.
       | 
       | There's a law about that:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule
       | 
       | It comes up in most DSLs.
       | 
       | I bet this is a better accidental scheme, by virtue of the
       | author, but a big part of the point of a scheme is that it's easy
       | to implement, yet powerful. MIT freshman used to build a scheme
       | interpreter and a scheme compiler in their first computer science
       | course (6.001).
       | 
       | It's very easy to accidentally a scheme.
        
         | trollian wrote:
         | I think Eich intentionallyed a scheme.
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | Yep, AFAIR he intentionallyed a scheme _twice_ , but both
           | times, the suits had a different idea (first time around, to
           | ride on Java marketing; second time around, to compete with
           | Microsoft and JScript).
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | But he accidentally an ecmascript on the way
        
         | robofanatic wrote:
         | thats scheme accidentallification
        
         | yarg wrote:
         | Reminds me of carcinisation; lots of things turn into crabs.
        
         | benj111 wrote:
         | Please people, wear protection when 'experimenting', especially
         | as teenagers.
         | 
         | A scheme is for life, not just for Christmas.
        
         | simiones wrote:
         | > I learned about S-types, which were to Lisp what JSON is to
         | JavaScript.
         | 
         | Do you mean s-expressions here (sexps), or is there also a
         | thing called s-types that I've been missing?
        
           | frognumber wrote:
           | Neither.
           | 
           | * I meant s-types.
           | 
           | * There is no such thing. The problem, as Clinton: "It
           | depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
           | 
           | S-types WERE a thing, but never a major one.
           | 
           | I ran across them as a high school student on a random
           | research project at a university as a summer internship of
           | some kind. They were used by a handful of research groups for
           | some data interchange format. Literally the only person who
           | would find the interesting is myself, and not for what they
           | were, but because they were my first exposure to Lisp /
           | Scheme concepts, which I had not heard of before, and which
           | triggered a series of (high school grade) epiphanies for me
           | (which would probably be obvious to 50+% of the people here).
           | 
           | As far as I know, S-types no longer exist. A quick web search
           | brought up zero references. There is absolutely no reason to
           | know about them in 2023. However, if you want to know about
           | them:
           | 
           | - They were quite literally S-expressions. All S-types were
           | S-expressions
           | 
           | - However, they were well-specified, so useful as an
           | import/export format
           | 
           | - In particular, they had research-grade libraries to do the
           | above from at least two languages (I would guess Java and
           | LISP, but I no longer recall; perhaps it was C++ and Scheme).
           | 
           | - There was some attempt to simplify, but I no longer recall
           | what it was. I recall that I was told it had something to do
           | with lists versus function calls, but looking back on it, the
           | explanation I recall being told makes zero sense. That's more
           | likely a function of my memory than the explanation.
           | 
           | I believe on that internship, my direct use of them was
           | probably limited to looking at some data in that format. This
           | was really at the outskirts of the project I was doing. They
           | did inspire a lot of work during the school year, when I
           | schemed for the first time, not really knowing what I was
           | doing but figuring out a lot of stuff in the process.
           | 
           | Looking back at it, though, having a standardized Python /
           | JavaScript / etc. import/export library for some standardized
           | version of S-expressions might be helpful. Or it might not
           | be. Who knows.
        
             | fanf2 wrote:
             | Sounds a bit like the S-expression syntax that was
             | developed for SPKI/SDSI in the 1990s. I am surprised to
             | find that the old spec has been revived after over 25 years
             | https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rivest-sexp/
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | > _I am surprised to find that the old spec has been
               | revived after over 25 years_
               | 
               | The thread at
               | <https://www.spinics.net/lists/ietf/thrd4.html#115999>
               | seems to be relevant. Especially
               | <https://www.spinics.net/lists/ietf/msg116441.html>.
        
             | simiones wrote:
             | Glad I asked, this turned out to be much more fascinating
             | than I thought. Thank you for the notes!
        
         | zelphirkalt wrote:
         | What is a Scheme and what is not a Scheme is actually pretty
         | well defined in terms of language concepts and features. The
         | JavaScript of back then is not that. Some Scheme may have
         | served as something that Eich took hints from, but he did not
         | create a new Scheme.
        
           | bitslayer wrote:
           | Took hints from, ergo "an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-
           | ridden, slow implementation"
        
           | frognumber wrote:
           | FYI: At the time, the creator of Scheme, Jerry Sussman,
           | believed the JavaScript was a Scheme.
           | 
           | I don't say this to claim he was right (I didn't agree with
           | him, at the time), but merely to point out that "what is not
           | a Scheme is actually" NOT "pretty well defined in terms of
           | language concepts and features."
           | 
           | A proper Scheme is as defined in Revised Report on the
           | Algorithmic Language Scheme, but there are many improper
           | half-baked Schemes too.
           | 
           | Reasonable people can and do disagree about which things do
           | and don't qualify.
        
             | aidenn0 wrote:
             | I think there is nothing more vacuous than taxonomy
             | arguments (though they can be fun). Kent Pitman (KMP), for
             | example, is on record as saying that Scheme is not a
             | Lisp[1]
             | 
             | 1: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/Bj8Hx6mZEYI
             | /m/6... (besides the inevitable flamewar started by
             | @lisper's question, there's actually some good discussion
             | between the "adults in the room" well downthread of what I
             | linked).
        
           | dahart wrote:
           | The story goes Eich was hired to embed Scheme in a browser,
           | and hung on to lambdas and functional concepts but lost
           | homoiconicity by management fiat; they didn't like the weird
           | way it looked. He tried to intentionally a Scheme and ended
           | up accidentally a Scheme step-cousin. It's fair to say some
           | argue it is a Scheme dialect, because some people do, and
           | they're not wrong, JS does share aspects. It's also fair to
           | say JS is not a Scheme, also true.
           | 
           | I googled and found someone's blog post with a fun
           | description: "JS is stupid Lisp in Java's ill-fitting
           | clothing. It's Alonzo Church going to a Halloween party as
           | Alan Turing. It's the lambda calculus in Turing-machine drag.
           | It's a quirky nerd with a cynical marketing department. (The
           | syntax and the name of the language -- JavaScript--were
           | determined by Netscape's desire to ride the coattails of
           | Java's popularity in the early 1990s.) It's multiparadigm
           | salad." https://medium.com/thinking-with-
           | computers/javascript-is-not...
        
             | Jtsummers wrote:
             | https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386327
             | 
             | For the story from Allen Wirfs-Brock and Brendan Eich.
             | 
             | Section 2.1, starting on page 7, talks about the portion of
             | JS history where Eich was hired to build a Scheme in a
             | browser and continues with why it changed and how.
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | > There's a law about that
         | 
         | That was my first thought too. As the length of your codebase
         | increases, the likelihood of (probably badly) accidentally a
         | scheme'ing tends towards 1.
        
       | michaelteter wrote:
       | There doesn't seem to be a lot of fun valid English writing
       | today. Certainly it seems the opposite is the norm, even at the
       | highest levels of government.
       | 
       | But I found joy very early in this essay. "Tonight's missive is
       | an apology: not quite in the sense of expiation, though not quite
       | not that, either; rather, apology in the sense of explanation, of
       | exegesis: apologia."
       | 
       | When an introduction provides such a concise but entertaining
       | junglegym for the reader, surely the rest will be enlightening.
       | And if not, we have short attention spans, so we click elsewhere
       | :).
        
         | munificent wrote:
         | All of Andy Wingo's writing is this delightful to read.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Pompous in a good way: you learn something. Rather than pompous
         | but you have no idea what they were saying.
        
         | spit2wind wrote:
         | Great for a blog, terrible for documentation.
        
       | chrisweekly wrote:
       | Could someone please explain the missing verb in the title? It's
       | clearly a deliberate omission in the linked post (which also has
       | a section heading "one does not simply a scheme"), but I don't
       | get it. Something to do w/ garbage collection, or a scheme inside
       | joke?
        
         | ReactiveJelly wrote:
         | Here's the reference -
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
           | chrisweekly wrote:
           | Thanks! This one somehow slipped under my radar.
        
             | all2 wrote:
             | And here's the other: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-
             | does-not-simply-walk-into...
        
           | quickthrower2 wrote:
           | Like the HODL meme
        
         | throw151123 wrote:
         | Old 4chan meme
        
       | codetiger wrote:
       | This accidentally the LLM model AI.
        
       | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
       | Note to self: learn a lisp. Lisp people appear to be having more
       | fun than the rest of us.
        
         | cfiggers wrote:
         | There's literally dozens of us!
         | 
         | If you're serious about learning a Lisp but motivated more by,
         | as you say, "having more fun" rather than, say, landing a six-
         | figure job writing it professionally... then may I recommend
         | Janet[0] for your consideration. Janet is an embeddably-small,
         | yet surprisingly batteries-included Lisp implemented in pure C.
         | In terms of syntax and core library it borrows more directly
         | from Clojure than from Scheme, but all the modern Lisps have
         | their bits of influence. I've found both the language and the
         | tiny little community that exists around it delightful.
         | 
         | As an example of the latter, somebody smart wrote a real actual
         | book[1] about Janet recently that was on the HN front page for
         | a day or so when he first released it. It's a gentle
         | introduction not just to Janet but to Lisp in general, and
         | assumes only general proficiency with JavaScript to get you up
         | to speed. I recommend it.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.janet-lang.org
         | 
         | [1] https://janet.guide
        
           | TylerE wrote:
           | Ooh that's actually really interesting. I've always been a
           | bit into lisp... even did a bit of amatuer CL back in the
           | day..but always thought the distribution model of basically a
           | memory dump was just the worst of all possible worlds.
        
             | bigfishrunning wrote:
             | I agree with this sentiment -- from a reproducability
             | standpoint, CL images aren't great. My workflow has always
             | been to maintain a source file and then use emacs to shove
             | s-expressions into the repl -- that way, rather then save
             | the image, i can just re-evaluate my source file and get a
             | reasonable facsimile
        
           | dleslie wrote:
           | While I like Janet, and find it to be a lovely little
           | language; I think it's important to note that it lacks lists
           | and cons cells, and so as a result some people don't label it
           | a lisp, and programming in it is unlike other lisp languages.
           | It's similar, because the syntax is similar and the macros
           | and various forms are lifted straight from lisps; but the
           | feel of programming in it is very much like programming in C,
           | and I find it's less like Scheme or Common Lisp.
           | 
           | Because it's not built around linked lists, the core type
           | most encountered for lists of data is arrays and tuples.
           | Neither is conducive to efficiently removing elements mid-
           | set, or composing two sets, or interleaving two sets, or
           | other operations that require reordering, replacing, adding
           | or removing elements in the set. When I'm writing code in
           | lisp I don't think about that overhead much, because for
           | linked lists it's not an issue.
        
             | cnity wrote:
             | > Neither is conducive to efficiently removing elements
             | mid-set, or composing two sets, or interleaving two sets,
             | or other operations that require reordering, replacing,
             | adding or removing elements in the set
             | 
             | Read this: https://isocpp.org/blog/2014/06/stroustrup-lists
        
               | dleslie wrote:
               | That's based around a contrived problem that was posed to
               | him:
               | 
               | > Insert a sequence of random integers into a sorted
               | sequence, then remove those elements one by one as
               | determined by a random sequece of positions: Do you use a
               | vector (a contiguously allocated sequence of elements) or
               | a linked list?
               | 
               | The key is that the sequence is sorted; and is kept
               | sorted throughout the insertion process.
        
             | TylerE wrote:
             | Feature not a big in my book. A linked list is almost never
             | the right answer. Certainly shouldn't be the default.
        
               | hajile wrote:
               | > A linked list is almost never the right answer.
               | 
               | And yet a subset of the linked list called a tree is
               | usually the right answer to problems.
        
               | TylerE wrote:
               | because it avoids all the pathological worse case
               | performance unless you get insanely unlucky with the
               | order the data is inserted... and even then you can do a
               | rebalance if you're that concerned about it.
        
               | dleslie wrote:
               | It depends on how you approach solving problems, and what
               | the problem is.
               | 
               | In the contrived example, a linked list is clearly a
               | terrible option for manipulating a sorted set of
               | integers. Modern computers can slice and dice contiguous
               | integers with vectorized routines, and those benefits are
               | lost with linked lists that are storing their data
               | haphazardly across the heap.
               | 
               | If your problem space is best defined with contiguously-
               | stored numbers, then for sure, don't use linked lists.
               | Most lisps will happily provide you with vectors and
               | arrays for these use cases.
        
           | vindarel wrote:
           | But is Janet as interactive as Common Lisp? (REPL, image-
           | based development, debugger, restarts...) The fun is there!
        
             | cfiggers wrote:
             | Yes, 100% to both the REPL and image-based development!
             | 
             | Janet's REPL has a debug mode, but I'm sadly not qualified
             | to evaluate whether/how it measures up to CL's due to my
             | own inexperience with either. :)
             | 
             | As for restarts (I had to Google around to get an idea of
             | what that means)--it seems to me that Janet does not have
             | first-class support for restarts in the way that some other
             | Lisps, for e.g. CL, do. Presumably (as it would be in most
             | other languages I would suppose) one could recreate that
             | experience in Janet by tapping into the first-party error
             | handling and REPL primitives. But you'd definitely be
             | rolling your own rather than having it already in Janet out
             | of the box.
        
           | ikurei wrote:
           | Since you mentioned this, what would you say would be the
           | right Lisp for more pragmatic, cynical reasons?
           | 
           | What Lisp should we learn if we want to make money from it?
        
             | cfiggers wrote:
             | If I knew the answer to that question I'd probably have a
             | very different job than the one I have. :)
        
             | stcg wrote:
             | Maybe Clojure. In 2022 it took the top spot for "Top paying
             | technologies" in the annual StackOverflow survey [0], and
             | in 2023 it tied with other lispy languages [1].
             | 
             | That said, I don't think it matters much. A developer
             | familiar with some lispy language (and perhaps functional
             | programming) should be able to quickly pickup any other
             | lispy language. And the developers that make the most money
             | have probably used a lot of programming languages, with
             | different paradigms.
             | 
             | [0]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#top-paying-
             | technologie...
             | 
             | [1]: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-top-
             | paying-tec...
        
         | defenestration wrote:
         | I had a lot of fun learning Clojure. While I don't use it in
         | daily practice, I learned a lot about elegancy, the advantages
         | of data immutability and using code as building blocks. For
         | learning I used the 4clojure website where you can solve
         | interactive coding puzzles and learn from solutions of others.
         | See: https://4clojure.oxal.org
        
           | jimbob45 wrote:
           | _learn from solutions of others_
           | 
           | I got my first job furiously doing that for nights on end. It
           | felt like cheating but it's ultimately way faster than
           | waiting potentially years to figure out those tricks on your
           | own.
        
             | defenestration wrote:
             | Yeah, good to hear. I also did this for nights on end. My
             | strategy was to try to solve the puzzle myself first (in a
             | reasonable amount of time) and then check the solutions of
             | others. Always fun to see if I could make my solution
             | faster/shorter/more elegant/etc. with the inspiration of
             | the other solutions.
        
               | Obscurity4340 wrote:
               | What are the odds that someone gets accused of plagiarism
               | for doing exactly that? Like, say there's a perfect
               | solution in existence with the fewest lines/tokens of
               | code all the elegant shortcuts and maybe a little bit of
               | "sorcery", how likely is it for two people to work their
               | way down the perfect solution and it basically looks
               | exactly the same, maybe they followed the same logical
               | workflow to arrive there, who knows...
               | 
               | Edit: like a hash-collision for geeks
        
         | tmtvl wrote:
         | I recommend Common Lisp, it's fast, it's mature, and it has
         | some wicked cool tools. You can find some resources here:
         | <https://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp>. You
         | can also look at CLiki (the Common Lisp wiki), the Common Lisp
         | Cookbook, and the Common Lisp Community Spec for information
         | any basically anything you may be interested in.
        
         | _0ffh wrote:
         | On the risk of drawing the ire of our lisping friends, I find
         | that I have more fun writing lisps than using them, at least
         | unless I equip them with a syntax.
        
         | LocalH wrote:
         | Does modding a game that uses a bespoke Lispish scripting
         | language count?
        
           | bigfishrunning wrote:
           | Yes! All you have to do to make a lisp is to make a thing and
           | call it a lisp. Lists are recommended, but optional.
        
         | carapace wrote:
         | One great way to learn Lisp is to write your own:
         | 
         | > The goal of the Make-A-Lisp project is to make it easy to
         | write your own Lisp interpreter without sacrificing those many
         | "Aha!" moments that come from ascending the McCarthy mountain.
         | When you reach the peak of this particular mountain, you will
         | have an interpreter for the mal Lisp language that is powerful
         | enough to be self-hosting, meaning it will be able to run a mal
         | interpreter written in mal itself.
         | 
         | ~ https://github.com/kanaka/mal/blob/master/process/guide.md
         | 
         | https://github.com/kanaka/mal
        
         | ookdatnog wrote:
         | I haven't done any serious lisping outside of tutorials and
         | books, but I warmly recommend the wizard book of myth and
         | legend, SICP (https://mitp-content-
         | server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...). I had a lot of fun
         | working through it.
        
           | tmtvl wrote:
           | Remember to watch the video lectures.
        
         | zem wrote:
         | I've played around with a number of lisps and racket is the one
         | I find the most enjoyable to use.
        
       | thewakalix wrote:
       | Followup: https://wingolog.org/archives/2023/11/14/whiffle-a-
       | purpose-b...
        
       | carabiner wrote:
       | The whole scheme?
        
         | sjamaan wrote:
         | And nothing but the scheme!
        
       | lkuty wrote:
       | Is the title grammatically correct ? A verb is missing, don't you
       | think... My mother tongue is french, thus I may be missing some
       | pun.
        
         | tusqasi wrote:
         | It is like a joke. I am not a native englisher too.
        
         | emmanueloga_ wrote:
         | The verb seems to be "a".
         | 
         | Does he regularly _a_ scheme? Or did he do it in the past?
         | Both!
        
           | vore wrote:
           | The verb is "accidentally", actually!
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | Proper verbing would be "accidented", I believe (and I
             | _love_ English for how you can just verb or noun anything -
             | it 's like Lisp of natural languages!), but I guess
             | "accidentally" can be chalked up to artistic license.
        
               | thaumasiotes wrote:
               | > (and I love English for how you can just verb or noun
               | anything - it's like Lisp of natural languages!)
               | 
               | This is an odd observation. All languages have
               | derivation. (
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation )
               | 
               | English has zero-derivation of verbs [that is, the form
               | of the derived verb is identical to the form of the word
               | from which the verb was derived], and this construction
               | is highly productive; many people have remarked on it.
               | But there's nothing similar for nouns in English, so I
               | don't see why you're listing nouns as parallel to verbs.
               | 
               | The meme expression "I accidentally [missing verb]
               | [something]" does not obey the rules of English, as you
               | can easily tell by the responses saying "you accidentally
               | did what?"
               | 
               | If you really meant that parenthetical, you might be
               | interested in Chinese, where academics sometimes get into
               | arguments over what part of speech a given example of a
               | word should be considered to belong to. There is very
               | little inflection, which makes the confusion possible.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | I'm speaking more about language culture, as it's used.
               | My native language, Polish, allows for convenient
               | derivation, but it's not a natural thing to do, and if
               | you try, people will look at you funny. In English, it
               | feels very natural and people will understand you when
               | you do it.
        
               | moron4hire wrote:
               | That's verbing a noun, but I don't think that's what is
               | going on here. I think the title is trying to verb an
               | adverb.
               | 
               | If the "correct" sentence is "I accidentally created a
               | scheme", then I think it would be "accidentallied". In
               | excising the verb, shouldn't one carry its tense over to
               | the adverb?
               | 
               | If the "correct" sentence is "I created an accidental
               | scheme", then it would be "acidentalled".
               | 
               | But verbing the adjective doesn't have the same rhythm as
               | verbing the adverb, in this case. And rhythm is the most
               | important rule of English. The indefinite article needs
               | to fall on a low note, and the adverb form is flexible
               | enough to end on a high note to give a lilting
               | affirmation, whereas the adjective form is not.
        
             | MereInterest wrote:
             | If I were diagramming it, I think I'd still label
             | "accidentally" as an adverb, but would note that the
             | corresponding verb has been omitted. It's the written
             | equivalent of hearing "Oh my, there's a gigantic <RADIO
             | STATIC> blocking the road." The unknown word blocked by the
             | radio static is still the noun, we just don't know what it
             | is.
        
         | technion wrote:
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
         | vidarh wrote:
         | It was originally a meta-joke way of pointing out you'd left
         | something out by intentionally leaving out the verb in the
         | sentence where you pointed out you'd left something out.
         | 
         | It's since become a meme of sort as a more general way to flag
         | as a joke that you've done something "accidentally" where a
         | fully formed sentence would be more ambiguous.
         | 
         | E.g. "I accidentally created a scheme" might still not be
         | entirely serious about it being an accident, but it's open to
         | interpretation and sets a slightly more serious tone. "I
         | accidentally a scheme" clearly signposts the title is at least
         | in part a joke.
        
           | gardenhedge wrote:
           | This is the role "lol" used to play. "I accidentally created
           | a scheme lol"
        
             | benj111 wrote:
             | Doesn't "I accidentally a" predate lol?
             | 
             | I seem to recall it from high school, and that was before
             | mobiles were widespread.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | I now really want a comprehensive history of its use. It
               | feels recent, but it's also the type of thing it'd be
               | unsurprising to find isolated examples of independent
               | "invention" of from long before it came into common
               | use...
        
               | benj111 wrote:
               | I've been considering this further.
               | 
               | Lol would have become widely used with text messages
               | which is when I came across it, it could have been used
               | back in the BBS days.
               | 
               | "I accidentally a" is basically just teenage humour.
               | 
               | I accidentally <implied sexual thing> a $X. (Obviously
               | becoming more funny the more unlikely it is for any
               | sexual thing to work on whatever $X is).
               | 
               | On top of that you've got the weird language
               | construction, just like speaking like Yoda is hilarious,
               | and you have the perfect thing to spread throughout the
               | playground.
               | 
               | Although internet usage doesn't imply the sexual act.
               | 
               | I accidentally a house Means i accidentally built? A
               | house.
               | 
               | Not I accidentally had sex with a house.
        
               | vidarh wrote:
               | It's exactly because it's such easy humour I'm curious if
               | there are any older expected uses... It seems pretty
               | clear it gained _prominence_ with the YouTube video
               | someone has referenced, and it may indeed be the first,
               | but we may never really know.
        
               | grncdr wrote:
               | No chance, "lol" has been in usage for at least 25 years,
               | possibly more than 30.
        
               | benj111 wrote:
               | Well this was in real life, so you aren't going to get
               | records.
               | 
               | Wikipedia suggests lol is more like 40 years old, but you
               | actually have a written record to back that up.
               | 
               | All I have is my own experience, I wasn't really on the
               | internet until the 2000s so I wouldn't have come across
               | lol until mobile phones and texting became widespread
               | (around 1999/2000).
               | 
               | "I accidentally a" would have been in the 1995 - 2000
               | time frame. But again that's just my experience of it.
        
               | seanhunter wrote:
               | Yeah LOL comes from the BBS days as do a bunch of other
               | acronyms/initialisms https://slate.com/human-
               | interest/2014/05/lol-s-25th-annivers...
        
               | pohl wrote:
               | I'll stand as witness to the fact that ordinary people
               | playfully tortured the language towards humorously cute
               | long, long before one TRS-80 could call another over the
               | phone. The tech just helped these people find and feed
               | off of each other.
        
               | zem wrote:
               | look up the (speculative) etymology of OK for instance
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | Knowyourmeme has a confirmed usage of "lol" from 1989,
               | along with a list of others from the same document:
               | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lol
               | 
               | "I accidentally" started in 2008, and they have a link to
               | the youtube video it came from:
               | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
               | kubanczyk wrote:
               | Interesting. Did you mean before mobiles or before
               | smartphones? As of today, it has been dated to ~2004
               | (knowyourmeme).
        
               | benj111 wrote:
               | No, I'm old. Mobile phones
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Nah, "I accidentally" came way after "lol". I remember
               | using "lol" as a kid on MSN/ICQ/IRC and "I accidentally"
               | wasn't around until I was a teen at the earliest.
        
               | jordigh wrote:
               | We have good record of when "I accidentally" started.
               | Circa 2008.
               | 
               | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
               | 
               | "LOL" goes back to IRC so at least 1980s or so.
               | 
               | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LOL#cite_note-mcculloch-1
        
           | sparrish wrote:
           | > "I accidentally a scheme" clearly signposts the title is at
           | least in part a joke.
           | 
           | Not if you're unfamiliar with the joke. And with the lack of
           | capitalization, the bad grammar had me figuring this was an
           | ESL author.
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | That's true for most language changes, but this is not
             | particularly new at this point, though still new enough
             | that it's understandable that it'll be misunderstood.
        
         | wkjagt wrote:
         | They deliberately a word
        
       | skrebbel wrote:
       | _A lesson I learned long ago is that if something isn 't fun, I
       | need to turn it into a compiler._
       | 
       | I want to frame this sentence and hang it on my wall.
        
         | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
         | Don't let your dreams be dreams.
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | Yesterday you said tomorrow, so just do it
        
         | packetlost wrote:
         | Do we consider macros compilers now? :)
        
           | bjoli wrote:
           | I would say yes. A compiler takes code and produces different
           | code. Maybe in another language. I wouldnt call a simple
           | anaphoric if a compiler, but I wrote this:
           | https://git.sr.ht/~bjoli/goof-loop and it specifies a new
           | loop construct for scheme. It takes code conforming to a
           | grammar and produces standard scheme code while also
           | generating loop code, temporary variables, identifiers and
           | all that jazz. It even transforms the code using CPS. That is
           | what you get for writing complex macros in syntax-rules I
           | guess.
        
       | Izmaki wrote:
       | As somebody with English as a second language, I hate it when
       | "accidentally" is used as a verb.
        
         | zfxfr wrote:
         | I am french I read your comment then read again the title to
         | see what was wrong and I noticed my brain automatically added
         | the word "entered" after accidentally. So yes I understand your
         | feeling
        
           | croisillon wrote:
           | i thought the missing verb was created and not entered?
        
         | db48x wrote:
         | It's still an adverb here. The meme used here is to
         | deliberately the verb as a form of wordplay.
        
         | zem wrote:
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
           | seanhunter wrote:
           | The fact that people do it doesn't make it any less
           | horrifying.
        
         | RugnirViking wrote:
         | I have english as my first language but I moved to a country
         | where most people learn it as a second language and people are
         | horrified to see how I communicate with my sister. Of course, I
         | wouldn't do it with them when i'm actually trying to
         | communicate effectively. I think its one of those "when you
         | understand the rules well you can break them" type thing, here
         | it indicates a carefree and playful tone, for a similar reason
         | to how the lack of capitalisation in the title etc indicates a
         | casual tone. It's trying to avoid being Official and Boastful
         | and Buisnesslike.
         | 
         | In particular, the first sentence is similarly playful with its
         | choice of words; suffice to say this is intentionally poetry
        
         | MereInterest wrote:
         | Would it help to still consider "accidentally" as an adverb,
         | but modifying an omitted verb? As a native English-speaker,
         | that's how I tend to parse it.
         | 
         | Up until the end of the sentence, the reader doesn't know
         | whether a verb is going to occur. English usually arranges a
         | sentence with subject-verb-object ordering ("I ate my meal."),
         | and not subject-object-verb ordering ("I my meal ate."), so
         | this is unlikely. However, variations occur, such as "Neither a
         | borrower nor a lender be." in Macbeth, or "Frankincense to
         | offer have I" from We Three Kings. These tend to be somewhat
         | archaic usage, and so an author may deliberately use this tone
         | for a sense of formality.
         | 
         | This is similar to a garden-path sentence [0], where the
         | sentence cannot be easily parsed in order. Up until the title
         | ends, we don't know if the title will so formal that it changes
         | up the word ordering (e.g. "I accidentally a scheme brought
         | forth.") or so informal that it omitted a word without
         | realizing it. This contrast between extreme formality and
         | extreme informality becomes a source of humor when resolved.
         | 
         | (And by dissecting a joke, I have made it that much funnier.
         | I'm great at parties.)
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
        
         | avgcorrection wrote:
         | I don't see what ESL has got to do with that preference.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Hurts my head reading the title
        
         | farmdve wrote:
         | I had to login to HN which I have not done in many months just
         | to say this to the young generation.
         | 
         | The title is from a meme. Like before the memes of today, when
         | a meme was an image around a black frame with white text.
         | 
         | It usually goes "I accidentally a <thing>".
        
           | brainbag wrote:
           | Until I read all the way down here to the bottom of the
           | comment thread, I was thinking about the older people who
           | didn't get this reference since I've been hearing it for
           | decades. But now I see, thanks to your comment, that it is I
           | that is the old one, and it's the youngsters that don't know
           | it.
        
             | gpderetta wrote:
             | Yes, it is an older meme, but it checks out.
        
           | m3kw9 wrote:
           | Thanks uncle!
        
       | kookamamie wrote:
       | Is there any chance of making the blog layout narrower, so that
       | it fits my Windows 95 + VGA resolution better?
        
       | lynx23 wrote:
       | Every sufficiently complicated systems has a Common Lisp at its
       | core...
        
       | ezekiel68 wrote:
       | The odd lack of verbs (in the title and the text) made me
       | immediately suspect this was an unfortunate AI submission. Is
       | omitting verbs part of the inside joke of Lisp communities?
        
         | pohl wrote:
         | It's a pretty common thing all over the internet to
         | deliberately butcher the language for humorous effect. The
         | LOLcat ("I can has cheeseburger ") translation of the Bible is
         | hilarious.
        
           | b33j0r wrote:
           | I haz read! Begat treats like make biscuits!
           | 
           | Rosanna, Rosanna, to Parton the Lamb!
        
           | _a_a_a_ wrote:
           | Bloody hell, there go a few hours. Thanks for that (somehow
           | both sarcastically and not).
           | 
           | https://web.archive.org/web/20190327161227/http://www.lolcat.
           | ..
        
           | junon wrote:
           | I bought that book after first reading about "ceiling cat"
           | and "basement cat".
        
         | BaculumMeumEst wrote:
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
         | _a_a_a_ wrote:
         | On February 22nd, 2008, YouTuber Ted Suzan posted a video
         | entitled "I accidentally a piano bench; is this dangerous?"
         | 
         | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally
        
         | avgcorrection wrote:
         | Joke cannot into brain.
        
       | wkjagt wrote:
       | It's time for a new book with a cartoon elephant on the front.
       | "The Accidental Schemer".
        
         | kevindamm wrote:
         | I accidentally a Scheme, and you can too!
        
         | iainctduncan wrote:
         | I would pay very good money for that book. :-)
        
         | tjr wrote:
         | Speaking of, I was disappointed that Duane did not make the
         | drawings for the latest volume. Perhaps he's retired now.
        
       | JoeAltmaier wrote:
       | Lots of discussion about how GCs cause problems ("far away from
       | time and space from the original") and destabilize and ruin your
       | life generally.
       | 
       | I knew I was not in favor of GCs. For any reason. A pox upon the
       | landscape of software.
        
       | m0d0nne11 wrote:
       | This sentence no verb
        
       | drmeister wrote:
       | I accidentally a Common Lisp that interoperates with C++
       | (https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp.git). We would also
       | like to move beyond BDWGC and the Whiffle GC looks interesting. I
       | will reach out to you, and maybe we can chat about it.
        
       | chubot wrote:
       | FWIW we also test the Oils GC with a X-to-Y to generator, where X
       | is Python and not Scheme, and Y is C++ and not C :)
       | 
       | For example here's a self-contained Python program to make
       | various types of linked lists and traverse them, making sure the
       | GC can follow the resulting pointers in C++, with field
       | inheritance, vtable pointers, etc.
       | 
       | https://github.com/oilshell/oil/blob/master/mycpp/examples/c...
        
       | kagevf wrote:
       | > That sounds like a bug farm.
       | 
       | Stealing that expression.
        
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