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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2570 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I assume internet forum syntax like "$Thing_Description" are taken from various programming languages... but which ones? Anyone know of an etymological dictionary for forum-speak?

The $variables, I think, come from PHP (which used to occupy approximately the role that Javascript does now as the lingua franca of amateurs making things that run on the internet), with acceptance being helped along by their older use in Perl (though it is manifestly not Perl: you never see @thing, %thing etc.).

The Jargon File is trying to be this, but thanks to the biases of its shepherd(s) it generally underrepresents anything from cultures that do not have a direct lineage from oldschool Unix hackers.

The $variable syntax originates from Unix shell scripting, which Perl, PHP and others have taken after.

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