How programmers were entertained before programming

Any language - from mathematics and music to mechanics and programming - allows you to create quite strange things. Here are just a few examples of how delightfully you can use these features.

We have quineas ( wikis ) - programs that display their own source code. At some vital moment, the composer, apparently, argued with one of his German comrades, and wrote his analogue of Quine. In music, this is a piece that can be played "directly" and the other side. In this case, two violinists play a duet, looking at the sheet from different sides. Here is a similar thing:


You can listen here .
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Lawyers are generally a song. Their profession is perhaps the closest to developing code, except that people play the role of code.

Lawyers have the same bugs, the same indirect interactions, the same huge layer of Legacy. But let's see what can be alienated. Here, for example, Charles Millar in 1928 took advantage of the fact that a will is, in fact, a mandatory script, which is triggered by a trigger.

The judge and the priest, known throughout the country to opponents of gambling, he left a stake in the racetrack. As shareholders, they became members of the jockey club, which they fought for several years. Our fat troll bequeathed the packs of the brewing complex to the five staunch sober-drinkers (one refused). Three guys who could not tolerate each other, bequeathed his villa in Jamaica. But the cherry on the cake was a large sum that Millar decided to give "to that of the residents of Toronto, who, within ten years from the time of his death, would produce the greatest number of children." From the same father. Then began a surge in fertility and tote in all newspapers on the topic of who will win. 10 years of sheer joy.


Actually, now linguists . In my opinion, the best thing that has happened in recent years in education in our country is the Russian Bear Olympiad. Such awesome trolls I have not seen for a long time. In the sense that the tasks are just plain crazy and beautiful, but what they do with their parents is just the finish.

For example, how do you like such a thing?

“Which combination of words makes sense:

1. Sailed went.
2. Crawled ran.
3. It came crawling.
4. The swim came running. ”

Before that, I was losing my linguists with a question about perEponal or reObble drums . The last six months - only "Bear".

Or, 8th grade, please, question A. Somina:

“Arabic verbs (written in Latin transcription) and their translations into Russian are given: saara 'move', dabba 'crawl', qatara 'go in one piece'. Translate the words sayara, dabaaba and qitaar from Arabic.

(A) train, tank, car;
(B) train, all-terrain vehicle, bus;
(B) car, tank, train;
(D) car, tram, bus;
(D) Tank, tram, train. ”

Parents ofigevy from the fact that at the Russian Olympiad it was necessary to know Arabic. How many complaints have written - do not count.

Or the joy in general:

“One of the dog breeds was bred in Switzerland, not far from the mountain pass, in whose honor it was named. And the pass itself received its name in honor of ... Answer options: (A) Saint John; (B) St. Lawrence; (B) Saint Bernard; (D) Saint Joachim; (D) Saint Leonard.

Knowledge of biology or history, as you might guess, is not necessary here, but it was extremely difficult for parents to explain.

I highly recommend downloading the tasks, here they are .

Literature - here are lots of examples. Starting from the works, where the hero knows what is in the literary work, and ending with the completely awesome “Codex Seraphinianus” of the architect and prankster Luigi Serafini. As the book defines Wikipedia - "is a visual encyclopedia of the unknown world, written in an unknown language with an incomprehensible alphabet."



The extreme stage of rejection is the book-games, including the famous Braslavsky.



Doctors - these with great pleasure look at the scripts of man and animals. I have already described the fact that we incorrectly write animals and the attack of Meklon on the chicken coop.

The same photographers can also use the semantic system, but blurry, in the form of generally accepted iconography (culturally-based template images, for example). And combine it with artistry. This is what can happen:


Irving Penn

Even the carpenters , and those noted. No wonder the word "hacker" came from there. But seriously, it was in the processing of wood that the rudiments of cunning mechanics developed - first, customers needed unusual caskets and sofas for rooms with crooked floors, then skilled dolls, and then it started, and any Foralberg will tell you. Special mention worthy of these toys here:



This is a simple detachable cube that uses our perceptual patterns. The same procedure participates, which makes us see a circle in this figure:



Over time, these things have evolved to full-fledged puzzles, breaking all perception in general.

We have examples of good trolling on Habré: from Wolfram (although something tells me that they were deadly serious, and did not read this as a study about why the crocodile is more flat than green). And one more thing about the reactor at home .

In general, any semantic tool created not just descriptions for objects, but could also interfere with its own architecture — like jokes that could not be translated. Or as a task about the tower and barometer. Or ... in general, dofiga everything. In general, it is something rather non-standard, breaking the system at the expense of some basic properties of this system itself. And I tell all this because we also have such a thing in board games. You probably know this story:



Such cards - it was a dream. And today - ta-dam! - they did:



Here is a link to the game page if you need a finished deck. And so, hold, this is a PDF for self-printing, if you want. I am now happy and glad because the gestalt has closed. Well, I beg you to show you something completely crazy - “red peaks” from your sphere. Thank you in advance.