The Ministry of Silly Languages
A man in a suit enters a government office. His walk is, by any reasonable standard, absurd — he appears to be simultaneously compiling s-expressions and generating JavaScript, a process that involves one leg moving in prefix notation while the other maintains strict lexical scoping.
The civil servant behind the desk does not look up.
“Application for a grant to develop a silly walk?”
“A programming language, actually.”
“Same form.” The civil servant produces a document of alarming thickness. “How many languages?”
“One.”
The civil servant peers over his spectacles. “Our records indicate two. A kernel layer compiling s-expressions to JavaScript, and a surface layer providing typed functions, algebraic data types, and exhaustive pattern matching.” He flips a page. “That’s two departments. Department of JavaScript Compilation, and Department of Functional Safety.”
“They’re the same language. They share a syntax.”
“Two languages,” the civil servant repeats, with the patience of someone who has explained departmental jurisdiction before and expects to explain it again, “wearing one trenchcoat. The grant must be co-signed by both departments. Neither will acknowledge the other exists.” He stamps the form. “Welcome to the Ministry.”
The man in the suit looks at the form. It has two sections. One is labelled KERNEL. The other is labelled SURFACE. There is a dotted line between them marked DO NOT CROSS.
He crosses it anyway. This is, as it turns out, the entire point.