{"id":2452,"date":"2015-04-01T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2452"},"modified":"2014-12-12T12:42:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T10:42:12","slug":"april-1st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=2452","title":{"rendered":"April 1st"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speedygrl.com\/funnies\/texts\/computer.folklore.from.net.rumors.html\">http:\/\/www.speedygrl.com\/funnies\/texts\/computer.folklore.from.net.rumors.html<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Another story, which took place on April 1st 1984:<\/p>\n<p>I was requested to present Unix software tools to the Software<br \/>\nWorkbench undergraduate course.  After talking about grep, SCCS,<br \/>\nlex and what not, I described an experimental expert system that<br \/>\ncreates applications by combining UNIX tools.  Given an English<br \/>\ndescription of an application, the system produces user manuals.<br \/>\nGiven an &#8220;O.K.&#8221;, it would go on and produce the actual<br \/>\nsoftware.<\/p>\n<p>The system was a success:  it kept some of the students busy for<br \/>\na long time.  Here it is, reconstructed from memory:<\/p>\n<p>#!\/bin\/csh -f<br \/>\necho &#8220;What should your application do?&#8221;<br \/>\necho &#8220;Type a short description followed by a control-D&#8221;<br \/>\ncat &gt; \/dev\/null<br \/>\necho &#8220;Working&#8230; here is the user&#8217;s manual:&#8221;.<br \/>\n\/usr\/games\/festoon | some sed | nroff -man | more<br \/>\necho &#8220;Is that O.K? If not, please describe what&#8217;s wrong.&#8221;<br \/>\nexec \/usr\/games\/doctor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m I strange for finding this hilarious?<\/p>\n<p>(Yes, I know the answer, never mind)<\/p>\n<p>Geek line, do not cross.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->OK, maybe I should explain.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> \/usr\/games\/festoon creates gibberish sentences (See footnote. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.retro11.de\/ouxr\/29bsd\/usr\/man\/cat6\/festoon.6\">man page<\/a> is also&#8230; interesting)<\/li>\n<li>This gets made into a <a href=\"http:\/\/liw.fi\/manpages\/\">Unix man page<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>\/usr\/games\/doctor is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.manifestation.com\/neurotoys\/eliza.php3\">Eliza<\/a>, an early experiment in very artificial non-intelligence. If you type &#8220;I am worried about my mother&#8221;, Eliza would reply something like &#8220;why are you worried about your mother&#8221; or &#8220;do you think it&#8217;s normal to be worried about your mother&#8221;. This kept us going for ages. The world was different then. Get off my lawn.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Footnote: an example of festoon output:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Inconsistancies had been conventionally factated by a measurable configuration, and a functional overview shall have been being easily licated by that minimization.<br \/>\nBecause an attractiveness was being microated by an appearance, there is not a candidate prolonged assumption of the affirmation which is zoated by development progresses of many constructivenesses.<br \/>\nA permissibly paracreaful current task is simply victesced by a total effect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From http:\/\/www.speedygrl.com\/funnies\/texts\/computer.folklore.from.net.rumors.html Another story, which took place on April 1st 1984: I was requested to present Unix software tools to the Software Workbench undergraduate course. After talking about grep, SCCS, lex and what not, I described an experimental expert system that creates applications by combining UNIX tools. Given an English description of an application, the system produces user manuals. Given an &#8220;O.K.&#8221;, it would go on and produce the actual software. The system was a success: it kept some of the students busy for a long time. Here it is, reconstructed from memory: #!\/bin\/csh -f echo &#8220;What should your application&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farting-around","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2454,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}