SARTRE is a fictional programming language invented as a joke by John Unger Zussman. It appears in a humorous list of "lesser known languages", published in InfoWorld in 1982 and later posted to Usenet. This is the original text pertaining to SARTRE:

    SARTRE ... Named  after  the  late  existential  philosopher.
SARTRE  is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in SAR-
TRE have no purpose; they just are there. Thus,  SARTRE  programs
are  left to define their own functions.  SARTRE programmers tend
to be boring and depressed and are no fun at parties.

As the description states, SARTRE is named after Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist philosopher. The reference to unstructuredness is probably a spoof of the Pascal programming language.

The other languages in this list are SIMPLE, SLOBOL, VALGOL, LAIDBACK, FIFTH, C-, LITHP and DOGO.

The joke has been expanded by John Colagioia who has attempted to describe a complete language which fits the description above. However, the inherent difficulty in such a project is perhaps so great that the results are even less amusing than the original post.

External links

• Usenet post
• Sartre project at Cat's Eye Technologies
  • documentation within said project