Russian students create programming language to help their ‘streetwise’ peers graduate

On December 5, a group of students at Saint Petersburg’s College of Information Technologies launched a parody programming language designed for “streetwise” computer science students struggling with traditional languages like JavaScript and C++. As reported by the news website TJournal, Semyon Gozman, Mikhail Belozerskiy, and Georgiy Mkhitaryan came up with“YoptaScript,” which appropriates Russian slang to make it easier for street-educated students to understand, after noticing that many of their peers had not learned a single programming language by the time they graduated.

Gozman told TJournal that the majority of his classmates could be described as “chotkiye patsany,” an idiomatic phrase that can be roughly translated as “streetwise kids,” and that some are even “gopniki,” or urban “thugs” whose vernacular is famously crass.