Lolcat is a compound neologism made by combining LOL and cat. Apparently, it refers to a humourous photo of a cat with an odd, often poorly written caption. Collections of the images can be seen at lolcats.com, on flickr, and numerous other sites webwide. But LOLCODE is even better than the images. It’s an operational programming language inspired by the grammar of lolcat captions. All programs begin with the command “Hai” (a misspelling of “hi”) and end with “kthxbye” (”Ok, thanks bye”). The main development page is here, and the main discussion forum is here. It’s the perfect way to play with a mouse and improve your coding skills at the same time!

The first and most famous LOLCODE program is shown after the break. Kthxbye!

In LOLCODE, the following four lines will output the phrase “Hai world!”:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE “HAI WORLD!”
KTHXBYE