Interesting article about a recent Trojan virus that seems to have been partly written in an unknown programming virus HERE

Otaku already here??

Sounds like a great plot hook for some runner investigation anyway

On a side note i am a long time lurker who doesn't really have that much to do with shadowrun anymore, I just keep seeing more and more RL life stories that remind me of the shadowrun universe. Does anyone mind me posting these up - or should there be a "Real Life containment thread"?

Nah, nobody minds.
We have several of these per week.
Usually Gadget related though ^^

Any this MUST be some large national organization because individual hacker's NEVER make their own programming languages? Wow, nice background research.

Every comp science student should be able to write something in an "unknown programming language", as it's not that hard to write your own compiler. But, of course, in most cases it will be something quite simple I wouldn't consider it a plot hook, as this is something that every hacker in 2070 should be able to do, if he wants to have his very unique style, but it's just fluff. It's seriously not a miracle or something like that and surely not on the same level as the resonance, just a personal style thing.

Poor background research, better fearmongering.

"HIDE SHEEPLE, THE ENEMY IS AT THE GATES!!! Buy our stuff to find out more!"

You want to see Otaku? Go to the closest university and find the Computer Science department, Computer Engineering, or maybe even Electronics Engineering Technology. Meet ten students, you'll have met at least one Otaku; with good odds of it being more like 5 or 8 Otaku... And that's just over here, I can't hazard a guess at how bad it would be in Japan.

I know! Its not like there is an Undergraduate course on the subject or anything right?

Yeah, we know that.

Does the average citizen on the street know that?

That's what makes it work.

@Daylen
You will have met eleven Otaku.

As someone with no programming knowledge, never knew that programming languages could be so varied and individual it kind of blew my mind, slightly dissapointed to find its more commonplace!

- For me now I imagine in the 6th world hackers are very proprietary about their own style of code and copycats (either in hommage, or trying to frame others) would be dealt with harshly

Actually a few years ago the petagon had some problems, because the guy who wrote their software started to pass away/retire. So fewer people started to knew the language, which made updates a bit more complicated.

Even people working in the same programming language has a... "Handwriting" that is unique to them. My programming teacher was able to tell people who copy-pasted work just by how the code was written. I started to be able to, but had to drop out of College due to lack of funds.Also happened when a friend of mine retired from the mine back home.

Not many people know and will put up with Fortran 4. With good reason, there is only one function that is ever called by GO TO...

The ability to create a feature rich compiler or new language that is anything more than a novelty is highly exaggerated.

Today, yes. Back in the old days, not so much. Thus it still being in the curriculum.

While not looking to throw down with you on this CanRay, I would dispute any claim that writing compiler or creating a language that is more than a novelty is easy or common; past or present. And sadly, the ability to create basic compilers is becoming a lost talent, not more common. When I started teaching again, I discovered that Assembly is no longer a required course and for a group of graduate level I.T. students (Graduate level!) I had to dedicate a night to to teaching first binary, then bits/bytes then calculating a subnet. All of this was part of my undergraduate...

Extrapolating from my observations, I think it would be fair to say that by 2070, perhaps each of the Megacorps has at least one language and compiler (see MSVC++, C#, Java, etc) with several community supported compiler/language combinations, but the ability to write one from scratch is very, vary rare. Assembly is a second generation language and proficiency in it is becoming exceedingly rare. The use of third generation languages is becoming slowly eroded by WSWIG tools that remove the complexity of underlying language to increase productivity. I see programming in 2070 by the masses to be a completely new paradigm with very few people having true low-level coding skills.

Supposedly it also helps you understand the whole thing better...somehow never worked for me...

You said it right there, IT. Technicians don't need much on programming skills. Computer science, and probably computer engineers, have required Assembly at every University with which I am familiar.

Just be be clear, I.T. means Information Technology and encompasses the majority of the field. Programming is the core of most I.S./I.T. degrees (including mine) through the College of Business and is where I see assembly being removed. That said, the majority of the undergrads I had personal experience with came over from a Computer Science backgrounds into the College of Business.

As in all things YMMV, but I was speaking very broadly across multiple disciplines and colleges and Universities.

I am not quite up to speed on how they match binary to language, as in the end anything that is compiled is in the ISA of whatever CPU it is expected to run on.

Most compilers leave signatures that someone experienced in that those subtle differences can see. Given the vast multitude of ways in a higher language to do the exact same result, I am willing to state the same is with assembly.

Optimizers as well! granted I have not looked at the machine code for some of my programs in a long time but using c# as an example running an optimized build back through reflector has led me to say "that is nothing like what i wrote".

As Blog said, Compilers have "Fingerprints" that someone who is experienced with vast amounts of programming (And you better bet the Government has people just doing that!) is able to ID them from those.

Funny thing, at my alma mater, assembly was not required and I didn't take it at all. This is a top tier school, top 10 for computer science when I was there. I spent a semester at a sister school (where my girlfriend was studying) and I got hit with having to know assembly there. Same system, just different campuses and they had pretty different requirements (their math requirements were also FAR easier). I've had to know about big vs. little endian and what hex is, but I used it more for hacking video games at home than I ever did at school. Everything is algorithms and higher level languages.