I wrote some during the mid 80's and compared to COBOL, I loved its brevity and speed.
Fortunately, I never had to go back and change it.

I'd give it a prize for the most modest name:

A Programming Language.


>>APL, possible the only language with:

(1) One-liner contests (it has an amazing set of APL operators, which could be combined into fantastically unreadable code) -- the winner would be the solution using the fewest characters

(2) Dead-key contests ... the operators noted above were all available as a single keystroke. This contest was to solve a problem where the single operator one would normally use to solve the problem was on a dead-key (for those of us who recollect when keyboards might actually have a dead key)

(3) Pornographic code ... APL allowed assignments of multiple variables all in one statement. This lent a lot to the unreadability of code. Since it was impossible to clearly define what made a statement unreadable, it was decided that calling it pornography was the best description .... you can't define it, but you recognize it when you see it.


Jim