Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> No, not really, I read the whole post. And the FORTRAN reference was weird, but there are weirder things people post (and believe)

True. I'm sometimes a source for similarly controversial statements. However, the following line should suffice to indicate the facetiousness of the post:

> This is the same reason that everyone uses FORTRAN.

Everyone does not use FORTRAN, and in fact it is so uncommonly used that it is ridiculous anyone would think otherwise. There are probably quite a lot of people in this industry who've never even heard of FORTRAN.

This is a common form of sarcasm in English, to counter an argument (programming languages should be English-only because there'd be too much fragmentation otherwise) by presenting the same argument in the context of something obviously untrue (that's why everyone uses FORTRAN).



Did you read my comment? I also said:

> ...and when writing, people do make mistakes.

Maybe he meant Python, who knows? If only there was a way to signal you are being sarcastic to avoid misunderstandings. Oh wait... /s




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: