This linkdump does not really have any predominant topic but it consists mostly of stuff that I came across in the past few days, that I felt I should share. Most of it does not really fit into any particular category, but I am gonna go ahead and share it anyway: First a few links that you should skip if you don’t speak German because they are entirely about this language.

• A video tutorial [~1:30h] about gender in German (der/die/das) that is really quite interesting. The author attempts to construct a gender machine that explains why certain nouns have a certain grammatical gender. [German only]
• While we’re on the topic of language, there is really good blog that deals with neologisms and the way language is used to manipulate thought. The authors that are all affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club also do a podcast from time to time, that can be found on the same site. They are quite frequent speakers at the Chaos Communication Congress as well, for example Martin Haase with an in-depth analysis [~1h] of the digital agenda of the German Government. [German only]

Welcome back,  dear English speaker ! After I shared some links on programming language design last week, here some more links that poke fun at specific programming languages as well but are not necessarily about language design so they didn’t fit with the stuff in the last linkdump:

• I came across a hilarious blog posting that is actually a few years old, that attempts to reconstruct the history of programming languages. It It is fittingly titled A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages.  It is full of gems such as:
  

  In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP […] remains an influential language in “key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension”

• Originally, I wanted to link to an old posting from a newsgroup here, that is titled Programming Languages Are Like Women. But upon rereading it, I felt it was sexist, so maybe I should include a short disclaimer. Which got me thinking if it really was a good idea to link to it in the first place. So I found a similar article comparing programming languages to weapons, that is even funnier and avoids insulting anyone except maybe some language evangelists.