93% of Paint Splatters Are Valid Perl Programs: the classic SIGBOVIK spoof paper
zenincognito · hn · 2026-11-12
HN resurfaces Justin McMillen's classic SIGBOVIK 2019 spoof paper showing that Perl's famously permissive syntax means 93% of randomly generated paint splatter images parse as valid Perl programs. A rigorously executed joke about Perl readability, still worth a read on mcmillen.dev.
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