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From: gs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gordon Strong)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: Re: BLKTRAN (offensive to blacks)
Message-ID: <846@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Oct-83 23:28:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.846
Posted: Sun Oct 23 23:28:42 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Oct-83 02:07:45 EDT
References: <129@shell.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 21

I liked the BLKTRAN article.  A few of us here have thought of
implementing it as a hack.  I think we'd change some of the
grammer, though.  I think we'd implement BE as the basic assignment
operator.  Example, FOO BE 3, BAR BE "RIPPLE", etc.  We were
thinking of implementing trees, but it would be too hard to
1) keep track of a node's children and 2) determine the parent of
a node.  Similar problems occur with implementing a garbage collector.
The problems are that all operators are capable of doing it, but none
of them will do the work.  Perhaps implementing a "welfare" garbage
collection algorithm would solve the problem.  We might even consider
building a BLKTRAN machine, but all the data would get stuck on the
back of the bus.  But the slowness wouldn't be noticeable, as it is
expected.  We could design leopard-skinned terminals and purple
crushed velvet keyboards to distract users from the response delay,
alternatively.  I could go on, but I have to get back to a high-level
discussion of CHINKTRAN, a new language for boat people.

-- 
Gordon Strong
genrad!mit-eddie!gs
GS%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC