Just a random act of blogging tonight (following a 3.5 hour sales call from a siding/windows contractor--I wish I were making that up). But this thought cheered me up on ride home tonight, after a bad half-hour capping a "Meh" week: Wouldn't it be awesome if programming languages were considered in the same light as Kung Fu styles?
(Aside: If you're in the mood for escapist--in some senses innocent--mayhem, I recommend Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle. I mean, when Roger Ebert describes it as ""like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny," how can you possibly say "No"? When I'm talking programming Kung Fu styles, that's what I'm talking about. Not anything, like, actually real or serious. C'mon...this is Frivolous Friday an' all...)
Rather, I'm thinking that the disciplined, type-safe, syntax-strict languages would be more formalized; the variant-based, who-cares-about-capitalization languages not so much. So you kind of have an "old school" vs. "new school" tension baked right in to that. That's good for starters.
The problem with computer languages, though, is that they generally don't have tangible names. Yeah, Java has Duke...or maybe you could go the (well-trod) caffeinated route with a coffee bean meme. Even so, "Duke style Kung Fu"? (Immediate John Wayne connotations: Nix that!) "Bean style Kung Fu"? Eh...makes me think of either Rowan Atkinson or tofu--take your pick. (And don't even get me started on Apple's "Cocoa": Oh, please.)
At a minimum, we'd need to re-name languages to animal or plant equivalents (No worries, Python: You're grandmothered in, 'k? The jury's still out on Perl.). Yeah, definitely more drama there. Because--let's just face it--the "'Snake Strikes from its Tail' maneuver in Pirhana style Kung Fu" sounds waaaaay cooler than "substr() method with a negative starting position in PHP." I'm sorry: You just can't argue with that. Even when haphazardly mixing-n-matching critters, yo.
To be honest, I haven't thought all that much beyond that. But I do know that it makes Monday--with its bug reports, friction, and all the stuff you never thought you'd be paid to do as a coder--that much easier to face with a lighter heart. And so I pass it on.
