
As its own creator says: “In C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg.”
Thanks to Jennifer Newsome for the find!

As its own creator says: “In C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg.”
Thanks to Jennifer Newsome for the find!

It wasn’t the answer the professor was looking for, but I’d have given it at least 6 out of the 10 points the question was worth.
If you search for “5 phases of software development”, you’ll find that there isn’t a complete consensus on what those phases are, or even if it’s just five.
Do you like programming? Do you like Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? If so, ArnoldC is the programming language for you!
ArnoldC will never make the TIOBE list, but then again, no other programming language is based on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie one-liners! Better still, there’s an ArnoldC syntax highlighting package for Sublime.
Here’s “Hello, World!” in ArnoldC:
IT'S SHOWTIME TALK TO THE HAND "hello world" YOU HAVE BEEN TERMINATED
It compiles down to Java bytecode. Running the program above is as simple as saving it as hello.arnoldc and entering the following on the command line:
java -jar ArnoldC.jar hello.arnoldc java hello
Find out more about ArnoldC on its GitHub page, and once you’ve been impressed, download it, start coding, and GET TO DA CHOPPA!
Since we’re on the topic of Arnie, enjoy this video:
In my last article, I posted this graphic, which uses emoji to make it easier to understand what the map, filter, and reduce functions do:

Since then, I’ve been asked by a couple of friends if what’s in the graphic is just pseudocode or if it could actually be implemented. I told them it was the latter, and here’s my implementation in Swift:
// Map
func cook(_ item: String) -> String {
let cookupTable = [
"🐮": "🍔", // Cow face -> burger
"🐄": "🍔", // Cow -> burger
"🐂": "🍖", // Ox -> meat on bone
"🐷": "🍖", // Pig face -> meat on bone
"🐽": "🍖", // Pig nose -> meat on bone
"🐖": "🍖", // Pig -> meat on bone
"🐑": "🍖", // Sheep -> meat on bone
"🐐": "🍖", // Goat -> meat on bone
"🐔": "🍗", // Chicken -> poultry leg
"🦃": "🍗", // Turkey -> poultry leg
"🐸": "🍗", // Frog -> poultry leg (no frog leg emoji...yet)
"🐟": "🍣", // Fish -> sushi
"🐠": "🍣", // Tropical fish -> sushi
"🐡": "🍣", // Blowfish -> sushi
"🐙": "🍣", // Octopus -> sushi
"🍠": "🍟", // (Sweet) potato -> French fries
"🌽": "🍿", // Corn -> popcorn
"🌾": "🍚", // Rice -> cooked rice
"🍓": "🍰", // Strawberry -> shortcake
"🍂": "🍵", // Dried leaves -> tea
]
if let cookedFood = cookupTable[item] {
return cookedFood
}
else {
return "🍽" // Empty plate
}
}
let cookedFood = ( ["🐮", "🍠", "⚽️", "🐔", "🌽"].map { cook($0) } )
// cookedFood == ["🍔", "🍟", "🍽", "🍗", "🍿"]
// Filter
func isVegetarian(_ item: String) -> Bool {
let vegetarianDishes = Set([
"🍟", // French fries
"🍿", // Popcorn
"🍚", // Cooked rice
"🍰", // Shortcake
"🍵", // Tea
])
return vegetarianDishes.contains(item)
}
let meatFree = ["🍔", "🍖", "🍟", "🍽", "🍗", "🍿", "🍰"].filter { isVegetarian($0) }
// meatFree == ["🍟", "🍿", "🍰"]
// Reduce
func eat(_ previous: String, _ current: String) -> String {
let qualifyingFood = Set([
"🍔", // Burger
"🍖", // Meat on bone
"🍗", // Poultry leg
"🍣", // Sushi
"🍟", // French fries
"🍿", // Popcorn
"🍚", // Cooked rice
"🍰", // Shortcake
])
if (previous == "" || previous == "💩") && qualifyingFood.contains(current) {
return "💩" // Poop
}
else {
return ""
}
}
let aftermath = ["🍔", "🍟", "🍗", "🍿"].reduce("", combine: eat)
// aftermath == "💩"
I put this into a Swift playground, which you can copy from this Gist or download here.
Click the image to see the full comic on its original page.
Dan Piraro, on his comic strip Bizarro, shows exactly what would happen if the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise time-traveled to 2014 and people saw their communicators.
Oddly enough, it was Star Trek that inspired Motorola’s Martin Cooper in his work on the first truly mobile phones: