Note: This site was originally at http://www.ionet.net/~timtroyr/funhouse/beer.html , however that site is now gone. I copied this from a site in Germany that had mirrored it. If Tim Robinson is out there and has the site, or wants me to take it down, please let me know.

99 Bottles of Beer

227 Computer Beer Styles

Take One Down: A Brief History

On a humor mailing list I was on in early '94, some nitwit posted the entire lyrics to "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Needless to say, this was seen as a waste of bandwidth. The first protest was that the job could have been accomplished with six lines of BASIC and here were the six lines:

10 REM Basic version of 99 bottles of beer
20 FOR X=100 TO 1 STEP -1
30 PRINT X;"Bottle(s) of beer on the wall,";X;"bottle(s) of beer"
40 PRINT "Take one down and pass it around,"
50 PRINT X-1;"bottle(s) of beer on the wall"
60 NEXT

Contributing

hoped

e-mail

99 (0x63) Programming Languages on tape,
99 (0x63) Programming Languages.
Take C++ down,
Install all 'round,
98 (0x62) Programming Languages on tape,

and so on, then if you use this list for lyrics you will sing more than 99 verses. In any event, if you contribute, if you could put your name in the form of your language's comment style, that would be great. Known to me, but missing from this list are:

Jovial
Macsyma
JCL (I'm told this can't be done: No looping constructs.)
Orthogonal
Mixal
ADL
CMS-2
Chill
PL/M
MAD
Compact II
Cal
Euler
MIX (from Knuth's computer books)

1/3/98 note about the contributors: So far, the people contributing to the 99BoB page have been the coolest people in the world. After submission, they clearly go over their code again and submit corrections and improvements. The amount of works shown is massive, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. You are only seeing the final products. They have also shown the patience of Job waiting for me to get the contributions placed on the web pages.

Strange Brew

This thing has become a monster! Since starting this project, I've gotten beer in some obscure containers. For the sake of the unwashed masses, I've included brief descriptions of the languages which, hopefully, won't detract from the code that follows.

The following gem should appeal to the mathematically inclined. (For the non mathematically inclined, you might replace Aleph-null with infinity)

  Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, 
    Aleph-null bottles of beer
  You take one down & pass it around 
    Aleph-null bottles of beer

How about a little Zen beer?

  No bottles of beer on the wall,
    No bottles of beer.
  Take one down, pass it around,
    No bottles of beer on the wall.

If you don't want to go poking through the entire list, I made a collection of links to what I consider the most unique languages. I don't state my reasons why I consider them unique, I just listed the languages. One exception, Meta-HTML is the only program source I know that you can actually run on the web. For those interested in older computer languages, you might check out The Retrocomputing Museum.

This list came to the attention of my old Language Structures teacher at my Alma Mater. The CLIPS contribution comes from a recent student of that class.

One of my contributors informed me that he had a heated discussion about programming languages with his son's high-school math/computer teacher. The teacher was adamant that there were no more than a dozen computer programming languages in the world. Ha, ha. Guess again. As a cross-reference to the Babel of computer languages, see the Hello World pages.

Back around '78 I found a Byte magazine survey of their readership that indicated that only 1% of the readers were female. Things haven't changed much; Spring '97 I got 2 programs from ladies kind enough to make contributions.

The day before I got the geek-site award, the Befunge language was bestowed a similar honor. For many months, work has prevented me from getting back this web page. In the interim, I got dozens of Befunge programs. Befunge is the work of a twisted mind. Be sure to check it out.

Tim Robinson
timtroyr@ionet.net
Back to the Funhouse

The List so far (227 entries):

Most Unique Languages

Cyber-Beer:

Beer Homebrewing Guide

BeerMasters Tasting Society

Yahoo Beer Links

The Programs:

click here

Compilation Copyright 1995-1998 Tim Robinson. All Rights Reserved
Permission to copy enthusiastically granted to instructors of computer science
(who would like to demonstrate the styles of different programming languages
to their students) provided that the names of the contributors are retained.