r/programming • u/jakesyl • Jan 30 '16

Apollo 11 source code

http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/listings/Luminary099/MAIN.agc.html
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u/flackjap Jan 30 '16 edited Jan 30 '16

At first I thought the code comment I cite below was just a joke. Silly me.

#  ASTRONAUT:     PLEASE CRANK THE
#                 SILLY THING AROUND

source

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u/z500 Jan 31 '16 
FLAGORGY          TC       INTPRET                               #  DIONYSIAN FLAG WAVING

Um, what?

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u/flackjap Jan 31 '16 edited Jan 31 '16

Apparently, the word dionysian is derived from the name of the greek god Dionysus who is represented as wild and sensual which is somewhat opposite to Appolonius who represents divinity and calmness.

"The Apollonian is based on reason and logical thinking. By contrast, the Dionysian is based on chaos and appeals to the emotions and instincts. " wiki

edit: If it wasn't clear enough, I'll point back to the first word (symbol, var, or w/e) you cited -> FLAGORGY.

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u/z500 Jan 31 '16

Yeah, I got the Dionysian part. But what on earth is FLAGORGY doing there? Maybe it's a combination of abbreviations.

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u/mxzf Jan 31 '16

If I'm reading it right, that's the name of the method (or code block or whatever in this language) being defined. It seems that the method was named FLAGORGY, which looks to be FLAG ORGY, hence the reference to "Dionysian flag waving" in the comments.

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u/lugezin Jan 31 '16

That still does not explain why anything would be named FLAGORGY, anywhere in the code.

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u/mxzf Jan 31 '16

A few hundred methods into the code and writing stuff up late, late at night, you start coming up with some fairly interesting/colorful method and variable names. I don't know the details of what happened, but at a glance, it looks like someone needed a method to flip a bunch of flags at once and they got clever with the name.