~ATH

~ATH (pronounced "'til death") is an esoteric programming language primarily geared towards imminently deceased programmers. The language exists on both Earth and Alternia.

John and Karkat are both beginner programmers attempting to learn this language. Either all programming languages in the Homestuck universe are similarly impenetrable, or they've made poor choices for beginner programming languages.

In C++, destructors—functions called when an object is destroyed—are prefixed with tildes.

Specification
Below is the simplest legal ~ATH program, which loops forever and does nothing. Any code deviating from this pattern will not compile. ~ATH(THIS) { // ADDITIONAL GRAVES... } EXECUTE(NULL); THIS.DIE;

The only straightforward way to get anything done with ~ATH is to use the EXECUTE statement. However, EXECUTE statements may only be placed at the end of the eponymous ~ATH loops. The loop's life is bound to that of a specified object, and will not terminate until that object dies. In the above example, the loop is bound to the program's life, so there is no way to break the loop and continue execution. However, ~ATH allows the user to import other objects, such as the author and the universe. Like Sburb, it is capable of interacting with reality. As Karkat notes, this might be useful for posthumously releasing a will or a deadly computer virus, but not much else. Anything with a short lifespan, such as a rapidly decaying particle or a fruit fly, is absent from the library.

The only way to get anything done in a timely manner is to trick ~ATH into doing what you want. How one does so is not clear, as the only example we've seen is this program written by twinArmageddons, which defies analysis. The program, when run, causes the computer to explode and places a curse on its user, everyone he knows, and everyone he will ever meet. Examining the source code, the program appears to split itself into two: one blue, and one red. (~ATH do us part?) It then imports two instances of the universe. What follows is inscrutible: the indentation and coloration suggests that the ~ATH blocks overlap in a manner that is entirely unlike any real programming language. The blue loop (which starts inside the red one, but ends outside of it?!) appears to run until the death of "!U2" (i.e., until the death of "not-universe-2"), which has no immediately discernible meaning, but is probably key to making the program have an immediate effect. As Karkat puts it, TA is "obnoxiously good" at ~ATH.