Anyone who speaks outloud in 1337-speak just doesn't get the joke. Its failure to translate to speach is akin to handwriting the countless facial expressions during a conversation.

This leads into a thought I had recently: Wouldn't it be interesting to compare the "languages" usd by different generations of computer geeks. What does the Comodore/Amiga game coding generation think of the early 90's BBS generation? How does the ARPANet "language" compare to the early university Internet and compare to today's 1337 speak?

I hypothesize that one generation doesn't evolve into the next. The computer geek languages grow around the technology of the time, which seems to to have distinct generational changes when viewed on a large enough scale. On of my college professors gave the example from his hayday: the 300 baud modem Lisp programmer would invite you to dinner by saying "foodP" to which you'd respond "T". How would that look in the language of ARPANet, FidoNet, MUDs, BBSs, CompuServe, or World of Warcraft?

My train of thought ended by derailment when I realized: older computer geek languages are likely less interesting because computing was less networked and there were less (yet infinitely more interesting) people communicating in that way, leaving less chance for evolution in that generation. But maybe some of you can proove me wrong. How did you PDP11 engineers converse electronically (on punch cards?)? What was the inside-joke lingo for you TRS80 hacks? What sorts of made up words were snuck into those early RFCs by you working group types?