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De-minified JS storytelling?

8 October 2011

We all like JavaScript (combined with HTML & CSS) because it’s “open source”, in the sense that we can right-click and learn how things work.
Because of this open nature, and to save kilobytes, some developers decide to minify their code, ie. to squeeze the names of methods and properties into short letter-codes. This makes code smaller in filesize, and very cumbersome to read or decipher. No meaningful names, it’s all a.b(c+d).e();
Yet, there is a narrative potential in that: what if we gave new, arbitrary meanings to those methods and properties? Taking the new names from a pool of semantically related words, say: food, you.chop(apples+pears).cook(); would turn obscure code into a rudimentary recipe!
I’m wondering what narratives would come out from a script that systematically deminifies JS. Anyone wants to make it? Or has a suggestion to start with (I already know that Google is my friend..)?

?wtf?

This is a blog. The author is Matteo Menapace.

Baddeo is Matteo with the sniffles: while prisoner of a nasty cold, incapable of pronouncing his name correctly due to copious ooze and compulsive sneezing, Matteo started to utter something like bæd - də - o, which was later adopted as his official nickname.

The real name is Matteo, which you can find sometimes morphed into Ratteo, Vaddeo or Mettiu but not Teo, nor Matte. He writes and speaks about himself always in the third person, apart from the nights of full moon.