INTERCAL

INTERCAL /in't*r-kal/ n.  [said by the authors to stand
   for `Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym'] A computer
   language designed by Don Woods and James Lyons in 1972.  INTERCAL
   is purposely different from all other computer languages in all
   ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally
   unspeakable.  An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will
   make the style of the language clear:

     It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
     work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem.  For example, if
     one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
     in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is:

          DO :1 <- #0$#256

     any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd.  Since
     this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made
     to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have
     happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do.  The effect would
     be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.

   INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
   more unspeakable.  The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used
   by many (well, at least several) people at Princeton.  The language
   has been recently reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently
   enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an
   alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted to the study and ...
   appreciation of the language on Usenet.