Why Hackers Are So Much Funnier Than You Are
Bob Nystrom is the author of the first programming language that automatically deletes your code if it doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to. He calls his creation Vigil because it exhibits “supreme moral vigilance.”
“When a Vigil program is executed, Vigil itself will monitor all oaths,” Nystrom writes in his description of the new language. “If an oath is broken, the offending function…will be duly punished. How? Simple: it will be deleted from your source code.”
Many computer programming languages strive for safety, barring programmers from introducing common coding errors, bugs, and security holes. But Vigil takes this notion to a whole new level — setting itself apart from “weaker languages that lack the courage of their convictions” — and it has already struck a chord with the world’s top coders. Last Thursday, at Hacker News, the preeminent online hangout for Silicon Valley software developers, Vigil was the topic du jour, sparking a discussion of epic internet proportions.
