3 WAT

The WAT talk may be the first instance of programming languages as stand-up comedy (for suitable values of “comedy”).

Watch the talk.

Then find three more behaviors that one might consider surprising in a language in general use. Explain why one might find each of these examples surprising.

A “behavior” may have multiple parts: it may be the juxtaposition of these parts that lead to the surprise. Your three behaviors can come from different languages.

Languages in general use include Python, Ruby, JavaScript, R Matlab, Java, Julia, Swift, Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Racket, …. If you want to use a language not in this list, feel free to ask. We’ll most probably say yes. All we’re trying to do is eliminate any truly silly choices (like languages that were invented to be confusing or obfuscated).

The objective of this assignment is to force you to get to know better languages you think you already know (and maybe like). Nevertheless, you are allowed to search on the Web for WAT behaviors. If you include any that you find, make sure to clearly attribute them (otherwise you are plagiarizing). When grading your work, we’ll be pretty underwhelmed if all your work came from Web sources: we really want you to introspect and experiment with programming languages, not only search engines.

In short, make your own WAT talk.We mean that as a euphemism. You’re not being asked to make a video! Nor even to include laugh-lines. But hey, if you really want to…