Older versions of MS-DOS came with bundled programming languages including
GW-BASIC and QBasic. Windows XP continues the Microsoft tradition of
ruining budding programmers with horrible programming tools by including
XPBasic, an interpreted language in which all of the customary BASIC
keywords have been replaced with advertising slogans.
Nike has paid a handsome amount to Microsoft for "keyword rights". Instead
of saying PRINT "HELLO WORLD", XPBasic programmers must now type JUST DO
IT "HELLO WORLD". Other common XPBasic statements include WHERE DO YOU
WANT TO GOTO 20 TODAY? and DIM ARRAY(1 TO 20) AS INTEGER BROUGHT TO YOU BY
VERIZON WIRELESS.
-- from Humorix's review of Windows XP (eXceptionally Pathetic)
Pascal n.
An Algol-descended language designed by
Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional
tool for elementary programming. This language, designed primarily
to keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus
extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point of
view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact,
became the ancestor of a large family of languages including
Modula-2 and Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline l
summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way, screamingly
funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&...
