back to article Here lies /^v.+b$/i

After I've gone In a melancholy mood, this week. Went back home to have a look at Dad's bench. He was a Classics scholar, actually; went up to Cambridge and everything. And so above his name and dates on the brass plaque screwed into the wood, instead of "He loved this place" or something equally fatuous, it says: ORE STABIT …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Andrew Barratt

    How about....

    Simply

    "Goodbye, World"

    1. Disco-Legend-Zeke
      Pint

      But in Basic:

      10 PRINT "GOODBYE, WORLD"

      20 END

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I'd rather die than use BASIC

        Oh !

      2. Steve Knox

        Or, you could be more dramatic

        10 PRINT "GOODBYE, "

        20 END

        30 PRINT "WORLD"

  2. Ian Ferguson
    Flame

    Jeeeeez

    I love the concept of the epitaph, but merely looking at Javascript makes my eye twitch. I beg of you, choose Pascal, choose C#, choose ANYTHING but that monstrosity.

    1. The First Dave

      JS

      My first thoughts were JavaScript for its elegance, or PERL because we are talking text, and it is THE text processing language, but on greater reflection I think there is surely nothing more appropriate than COBOL

  3. Shane8
    Thumb Up

    Memories

    Reminds me of a java irc bot somebody made, which at first, fell over at the classic:

    x=1; while(x>0){ echo "Hello World!"; }

  4. banjomike
    Happy

    How about ...

    Do Stuff

    until

    End

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Be language neutral

    print('goodbye, world');

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Either

    void life_status(){ return null; }

    Or, if special characters can't be carved in granite slabs:

    He liked Worms, worms like him.

    Ask for the capital W to be in bold.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Brainfuck

    Can only really be one candidate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck

  8. jake Silver badge

    How about English, Stob?

    My headstone will read:

    I came, I saw, I understood, I cried.

    1. serviceWithASmile
      Mushroom

      how about

      RTFA?

      1. jake Silver badge

        @serviceWithASmile

        How about looking up "trenchant"?

        A little satire & irony wouldn't hurt, either ...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What to choose?

    Pascal - the first proper language I learnt and one I can still think in, as opposed to continuously translating

    or

    Objective C (SunOS vintage before Jobs got his hands on it). I remember the joys of writing my first polymorphic Edit buffer [[copyBuffer copy this ] paste]. Given an epitaph of

    [[afterLife cut this] paste]

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Definatley Pascal or it's children.

      try

      Living;

      finally

      Break;

      end;

      ps: I know the break is redundant, it is artistic licence.

      pps: The reg is balls for displaying code....

      1. Steve Evans

        I'd certainly go for a Pascal family lanuage...

        repeat

        try

        while fun do stuff;

        except

        curse(loudly);

        end;

        until fatal;

        decompose;

  10. Jon Press

    Algol 68?

    I think I recall seeing a rough approximation to The 12 Days of Christmas forming a syntactically valid Algol 68 program (though I might have imagined it over the intervening decades) - not necessarily appropriate words for a headstone but presumably it's an indication that other sentiments might be expressed (as well as an indication why the language never caught on).

    Not that it need be a complicated message: "if I.exists() then raise alarm" should suffice for most purposes.

    Alternatively, I think I have somewhere a listing of a Modula-2 compiler which is of no use for any living creature and, if stood next to your last resting place, would provide plenty of space for the bereaved to add their own messages at the final END;

  11. Paul 120

    Python

    import lifeafterdeath

    1. CarlC

      you inspired me.....

      from lifeafterdeath import paradise

      1. pepper

        Cant be sure of that

        from lifeafterdeath import *

  12. Thomas 4

    Hmm

    IF HeartBeatPresent = True AND BreathingInAndOut = True THEN

    Dig me up this f***ing instant

    ELSE

    Leave flowers and beer below

    END IF

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. annodomini2
      Coat

      Google special

      ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

      // Tombstone_Header.h

      // ------------------------------

      //

      // Author: None

      //

      // Copyright: Google

      //

      // License: Mine!!!

      //

      ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

      IF HeartBeatPresent = True AND BreathingInAndOut = True THEN

      Dig me up this f***ing instant

      ELSE

      Leave flowers and beer below

      END IF

  13. WhoIsThis?

    Not what you want....

    do

    spin

    while time>0

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Ultimate injection attack

      Assuming these entries might go into some funeral director's database you could ask for something that will end up as an awesome SQL injection attack resulting in your name going on every headstone created that week.

      For some value of "awesome".

      And where has the headstone icon gone?!

      1. mitch 2

        Here lies Little Bobby Tables?

        http://xkcd.com/327/

  14. VinceH

    Letters, digits.

    exit(1);

    That is all.

    1. Havin_it

      Bit pessimistic!

      exit(0);

      Shirley?

      1. VinceH

        Letters, digits.

        For a normal ending, yes - but in this case something went wrong: I died.

        And, cunningly, the value of one indicates that one person has left the building.

      2. DZ-Jay

        Re: Bit pessimistic!

        Not if you go out the same way you came in: kicking and screaming.

  15. Graham Bartlett

    I know C, C++ and C# best

    extern void graham(char& worms);

    The worms go in, the worms go out. I'll be cremated. When I'm done, I won't be returning from the afterlife (if one exists) with any information for you. And if you know me, you can fill in the details of what I got up to.

    Although

    Body graham = gcnew Body;

    has a certain ring to it. Someone else set my body up for me. And when I'm finished with it, someone else is going to have to free its resources, bcos I'll be done processing.

  16. Woza

    How about

    tried{

    }caught

  17. Graham Bartlett

    Oh, another one

    for(;soldiers->game();this->bugger());

  18. PJI
    Happy

    Ksh

    echo life >/dev/null 2>&1

  19. GrumpyGit

    hope for the best...

    $live{forever} or die $trying

  20. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    eh...

    IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.

    PROGRAM-ID. VERITY.

    PROCEDURE DIVISION.

    BEGIN.

    STOP RUN.

    been too long, so there may be errors, but if you want to be remembered in perpetuity, choose an ancient language that will be around for all eternity...

  21. John Tappin
    Coffee/keyboard

    how about

    how about a simple

    ECHO "Life"

    or for a more limited audience

    BEGSR life

    EVAL life = false

    SETON LR

    ENDSR

    My last try

    Throw New LifeNotFoundException("[pulse not found]", e)

    1. Expat Paul

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      Now you're speaking my language

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: how about

      Sorry, any headstone message should be delivered in LR Total Time by definition. Nothing gets more final than that....

  22. dogged

    C#

    stob.Dispose()

    1. pj3090

      Not recommended usage

      It's generally better to combine IDisposable with the using statement, but

      using(stob) { ... }

      sounds a bit cynical for an epitaph. Maybe a C++ style ~stob() would be more whimsical.

      1. dogged

        using

        It can be good practice, but being dead isn't considered great practice for a programmer.

        Therefore, the unshielded stob.Dispose() should be adequate.

  23. Darren Davis
    Stop

    Should cover most bases...

    Exit(1);

  24. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

    X-Face header?

    Usenet will (of course) never die - one of these might be appropriate: http://ace.home.xs4all.nl/X-Faces/

  25. Gary B.
    Facepalm

    Whatever you do...

    ...don't use Lisp, or one of the Lisp-like languages. That would just be cruel, especially if the stone carver misses a ( or ). (How embarrassing it would be for the epitaph to be syntactically incorrect by accident)

  26. Frostbite
    Happy

    More BASIC

    10 IF HEART$ = "OK" THEN GOTO 20 ELSE GOTO 40

    20 PRINT "Hello World"

    30 GOTO 10

    40 PRINT "Goodbye World"

    50 END

    1. nyelvmark
      Boffin

      GOTO isn't just BASIC

      ...but I'm glad to see someone understands programming fundamentals, and not just fashions.

      I prefer this one-line C version:

      hell: if (Verity) goto hell;

      Roughly equivalent to "over my dead body", but I suppose you might have difficulty getting it past the vicar.

  27. Chris Miller

    I'm planning to use COBOL

    But I'll need a 200 foot headstone. I've already got the first 600 lines of the Data Division written.

    The question is, 74 or 68? Why use that poncy END-IF nonsense when you can spend many happy hours searching for that missing '.' ?

  28. Pavlov's obedient mutt
    Happy

    mine..

    Vedi

    veci

    veni

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.