Paul McGuire wrote: [snip]
I would characterize the 80's as the transitional decade from structured programming (which really started to hit its stride when Djikstra published "Use of GOTO Considered Harmful") to OOP, and that OOP wasn't really "joyful" until the early-to-mid 90's.
IMMEDIATE NOTICE TO ALL PYTHON SECRET UNDERGROUND MEMBERS.
Classified. Any disclosure to non-PSU members prohibited. Offenders will be apprehended and removed from the time stream, permanently.
Words in human languages typically consist of a combination of vowels and consonants, at least up until the start of the posthumanist revolution in 3714, when the Morning Light Confederation's ships reached the ablethik-seganichek world of Kaupang again (on Hellenberg consensus time streams with catalog marker AB-7). Alphabetic scripts are a typical way to represent them. Even in the posthuman phase on Kaupang they were widely appreciated as a quaint representation.
The language English, an indo-european tongue of the west-germanic persuasion (expressiveness rating 7, comprehensiveness rating 12, fits in the moderate Y group of the Lespan pan-species language classification system), is widely in use throughout a surprisingly long period on many time streams. This language does not have overly long consonant combinations.
The language Dutch, though closely related to the language English has a slightly different sound to glyph mapping system. Dutch is, of course, the true language of the Python Secret Underground and the official native language of Python users. In the language Dutch, a certain vowel sound is expressed as a combination of the glyphs 'i' and 'j'. The glyph 'j' however is exclusively used for consonants in the English language, unlike in Dutch, where 'j' serves a dual role.
Human brains used to the English language cannot cope with glyph representations that express consonants in too long a sequence, without any space left for vowels. A combination like 'jkstr' in the English language is inevitably considered to be a spelling error, and corrective procedures automatically attempt to correct the spelling of such a word to a more acceptable combination.
This happens frequently to the name 'Dijkstra', a name that originated in the Dutch natural language. The English eye cannot accept such a ridiculous combination of consonants (j k s t *and* r?), and desperately tries to resolve the situation. As a result, the glyphs 'i' and 'j' are frequently reversed.
This is extremely unfortunate, as Djikstra is well known to be a primary moniker for the leader of the Insulationist faction within the Gheban coalition. The Insulationist faction is, of course, a prominent member the alliance that produced the Alien Whitespace Eating Nanovirus. Djikstra is therefore an enemy of the Python programming language. All that we stand for. All our hopes. All our dreams will come to naught if Djikstra gets his way.
The moniker Djikstra is to be avoided in public utterances. PSU members can give themselves away and draw unwanted attention from the Insulationist overlord at this critical junction. What's worse, innocents might be caught up in this cosmic web of intrigue. While most innocents can of course be safely ignored, any innocent of temporal tension rating 17 and above (revised scale) should not be exposed to undue danger, as they may be essential for our time stream manipulations.
It is therefore important to avoid the utterance of Djikstra's name at all costs!
ADDENDUM FOR PSU MEMBERS OF CLASSES NE-100 AND HIGHER
The relation between Djikstra and Dijkstra's name is of course not a coincidence. As was already evidenced in the famous "Considered Harmful" article, the great philosopher Dijkstra was on to a monumental cosmic secret: that reality is bound by a term rewriti
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