If Programming Languages Were Women
Posted by Mariia Mykhailova on March 3, 2011The upcoming spring made me wonder: if programming languages were women, what kind of women would they be? A bit of googling brought up a few outdated articles which missed a lot of my favorite languages, so I decided to bring together a list of my own. Some of the most popular languages just don't feel like a female character for me, so I skipped them - you're welcome to suggest a vision of your own. No offense is meant for any language or its users, or to women, since I'm one of them :-)
Prolog
A woman you can only dream about: she does whatever you want. The problem is, the description of what exactly you want takes longer than the explanation of how to do this.
BASIC
A hot divorcée; she specializes in seducing teenagers, and a lot of them get their first experience from her. The adults have various opinions about her: some recall her fondly, while the others disapprove her bad influence on young minds.
Java
A business-woman in her thirties. Can handle anything and doesn't really care about her job conditions, so she's really appreciated in corporations. Dates mostly businessmen. She's too focused on her job to look or behave sexy, but she's really good in bed once you're there.
Assembler
A very old woman with sausage curls. She was amazingly popular in last century; none of her coevals are alive, so little is known about her, but the rumor is, she was in high favor with Lincoln.
Fortran
An old woman with scientific background. Used to be just as popular as Assembler, but a decade later. She still works for several research institutes, because of her priceless experience.
Pascal
Your first school teacher and probably your first love. Some people mock on her, but you'll never forget her.
APL
She's probably Chinese. Or is it Japanese? Whatever, she writes with hieroglyphs, and only a few men can surmount the language barrier.
J
A daughter of APL and an American guy. Father taught her Latin alphabet, but mother's nature is too strong, so she doesn't use proper English anyways.
SQL
A tidy housewife with strong inferiority complex. The latter explains why she refuses to do a lot of things natural for other women or does them in a really weird way.
TeX
An elderly typist clerk who works for Donald Knuth and earns a bit on the side by typesetting books written by other people. She's almost melted in her typewriter, so most people can't imagine that she's a woman indeed.
Nemerle
A girl from nameless village in Poland. She is believed to be a saint within the village, but outside of it she's almost unknown.
ABAP
A business-woman in her sixties. Insanely rich - you have no idea about the order of magnitude of her fortune. Your life with her is all business launches and official meetings, airplanes, hotels and cocktails. You grow wealthy and respectable with her, but you haven't had sex in ages.
Scratch
A perfect babysitter, loves animals. Her clothes are a bit too bright, but if you get to know her closer, she's as good as others.
Brainfuck
A porn star: everybody have seen her or heard about her, everybody knows she's fantastic in bed, but only a few people have had sex with her. By the way, it's really fantastic :-) Very neat, speaks with a slight stutter.
F*ckF*ck
Brainfuck's little twin sister; the only thing you'll ever hear from her is profanity, though sometimes she tries to be social and censor her speech.
Pi
A mad mathematician; knows by heart all digits of Pi and insists that you know them as well.
FP
A theoretical description of a woman, written by a man long ago, when the women haven't been invented yet. Leaves a lot of space for interpretation; there are several modern women who try to match the description, but the results vary.
Hanoi Love
A puzzle champion; all her men are required to know the puzzles based on towers of Hanoi. Most people don't share her obsession with puzzles, so nobody dates her.
HQ9+
A girl who's not really fit for real life; all she does is salute and chirp about herself and beer - and all this pellmell. Well, she has some thoughts deep inside, but you'll never know that.
INTERCAL
A bad-tempered old woman. Demands people to be polite with her, but gets irritated if they are too soft. Writes numbers in Roman system, probably because of age.
Omgrofl
Spends a lot of time chatting with her snowline pals, so speaks in slang. Laughs a lot. Sometimes checks herself and tries to act maturely, but doesn't succeed.
LOLCODE
A 15-years-old sister of Omgrofl. Wears a lot of pink, from fluffy slippers to bag with Hello Kitty and Doraemon badges on it. Loves cats and resembles a cat herself - when she curls on your laps and hums something, you feel an urge to pet her. However, the society disapproves close relationship with her.
Piet
A painter who works in neo-plasticism (you're not sure about this though). She's good, but dating her takes a lot of art sense - not everybody has that.
Whitespace
A very secretive girl; her motto is "Equal rights for all" - and that's all information about her.
Shakespeare
Talks only in Bard-of-Evon language; to get her phone, you'll have to write a short play. Thinking about something more is really scary.
Chef
All her life is about cooking. If you can't cook, you've got no chance with her.
CPL
Does nothing, except for commenting everything.
Malbolge
Female artificial intelligence. To talk to her, you'll have to use a translator program, and the message will probably be outdated but the time it's translated.
COW, Ook!
That's for zoophiles. Mostly advised against.