
Kvikkalkul: the secret programming language of the Swedish Navy? - compbio
http://workbench.cadenhead.org/book/homepage24/kvikkalkul/
======
Zirro
The language appears to be fiction beyond these Usenet posts, and the same
goes for the mentioned "SABINA" computer. Capital punishment, brought up as a
common consequence of possessing this information in Sweden is, of course,
incompatible with current Swedish society.

The Swedish Wikipedia has an article about it (describing it as likely being
fiction) here:
[https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikkalkul](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikkalkul)

(I am Swedish.)

~~~
schoen
I was going to say "also, isn't the Swedish word for 'quick' _snabb_?" But
then Wiktionary told me that there is, in fact, also a word _kvick_ with a
similar meaning.

Extra bonus: it turns out that quick/kvick is cognate with
Italian/Spanish/Portuguese _vivo_ 'alive' (which makes the older sense in "the
quick and the dead" make more sense, too!).

~~~
davidweir
In addition to "the quick and the dead", it also appears in the idiom "(cut)
to the quick", meaning to cut someone deeply - usually emotionally.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cut_to_the_quick](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cut_to_the_quick)
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/to_the_quick](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/to_the_quick)

Take it back further, and it's cognate with bíos in ancient Greek, whence the
prefix bio-.

~~~
ithkuil
In Croatian "Quicksilver" is called "Živa", which also means "alive".

~~~
V-2
same in Polish ("żywe srebro"). eg.
[http://www.filmweb.pl/film/%C5%BBywe+srebro-1986-9031](http://www.filmweb.pl/film/%C5%BBywe+srebro-1986-9031)

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mhomde
As a Swede I'm pretty sure Kvikkalkul is not something we'd name a programming
language, it sounds more like Norwegian or Icelandish

As a sidenote I heard an anecdote about a guy who programmed warheads. He was
writing the detonate code wondering how to exit gracefully when it exploded so
he wrote something like:

    
    
       10: var a=5
       20: Detonate()
       30: If (a==5) goto 10;
       40: Exit;
    

The logic being that the variable should be empty upon explosion...

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TeMPOraL
"Apart from real-time submarine applications such as guided torpedo control, I
did an accounting package in kvikkalkul as well."

Yeah, sounds legit. I got a good laugh though.

~~~
sugarraps
He probably got the capital punishment. Saying that "I did an accounting
package" doesn't seem like a great way to stay anonymous.

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hnlauncher
Is there any proof whatsoever for this? I'm extremely skeptical because the
first post Usenet post warns that you'd be sentenced to death if you were in
possession of information about Kvikkalkul.

Sweden hasn't practiced capital punishment since 1910.

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captaintod

        <!--This file created 2:13 AM  7/29/99 by Claris Home Page version 3.0-->

~~~
click170
Am I the only one who read that and thought to myself, 'gee, why would he set
his clock so far into the future?'

Facepalm.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Oh you youngsters, born just before Y2K...

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TeMPOraL
I'm thinking about implementing a kvikkalkul interpreter in Common Lisp.
Sounds like a fun weekend project.

~~~
integricho
Share on HN when finished :)

~~~
ShaneWilton
I've got a Ruby implementation underway. The parser and lexer works, and I
just need to write a quick VM now:
[https://gist.github.com/ShaneWilton/62e72a36759aaacabd84](https://gist.github.com/ShaneWilton/62e72a36759aaacabd84)

The code is a little rough, but it works.

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ChartsNGraffs
Language development has since been taken over by IKEA and it's main use right
now is programmatic furniture generation.

[http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/series/18329/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/series/18329/)

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ChrisArchitect
this reminds me of FikaScript, the Swedish Javascript generator
[http://fikascript.se/](http://fikascript.se/)

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vl
Haha, Quick Calcul[ation].

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CmonDev
Quickcalcul?

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kjs3
_There is an Ada to kvikkalkul translator and most new programs are written in
Ada and then translated to kvikkalkul. The kvikkalkul version was the
definitive program that was reviewed, approved, tested and maintained. There
was also a Simula to kvikkalkul translator in the 70s and some programs were
written with it._

Nope nope nope...my suspension of disbelief popped right there. Great troll,
tho.

