The 2014 XYZZY Awards are out.
I really need to find the time to play some of these.
(Actually, don’t ignore the Hugo Awards. As part of the Sad Puppy foofarah some worthy authors were nominated, some worthy authors withdrew, and Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem was up-leveled. I would not have read it otherwise, and I liked it. Recommended).
From http://www.speedygrl.com/funnies/texts/computer.folklore.from.net.rumors.html
Another story, which took place on April 1st 1984:
I was requested to present Unix software tools to the Software
Workbench undergraduate course. After talking about grep, SCCS,
lex and what not, I described an experimental expert system that
creates applications by combining UNIX tools. Given an English
description of an application, the system produces user manuals.
Given an “O.K.”, it would go on and produce the actual
software.The system was a success: it kept some of the students busy for
a long time. Here it is, reconstructed from memory:#!/bin/csh -f
echo “What should your application do?”
echo “Type a short description followed by a control-D”
cat > /dev/null
echo “Working… here is the user’s manual:”.
/usr/games/festoon | some sed | nroff -man | more
echo “Is that O.K? If not, please describe what’s wrong.”
exec /usr/games/doctor
I’m I strange for finding this hilarious?
(Yes, I know the answer, never mind)
Geek line, do not cross.