> Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses.

Fortunately? Now that they know it's LISP, they can just attack during GC.

(I know what you're going to say… but the parent joke predates incremental garbage collection.)

actually, it was javascript and the file contained:

              }
          });
      };
  }());

Well, people do say Javascript is a Lisp in C clothes, and for a good reason. Well, for a bad reason too, as in this case.

I used to say that too until I read http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt...

It is not, but there are reasons some people say that. Keep in mind this is a posting about jokes. By the way, someone managed to downvote the parent -- what a strange reaction to a joke! Kind of sad, really.

The joke would be a little better if you didn't explicitly as it was a lisp. Gotta leave a moment of epiphany for the listener.

I can't make up my mind about which of the following is better:

> A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses.

or

> A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was Lisp.

A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the program governing U.S. missile launches.

Fortunately it was in Lisp, so it was all closing parentheses.

My attempt:

A Chinese spy stole the last 48MB of the Abram's targeting system. To our good fortunes this was only the closing parentheses.

I don't know what's scarier: the code being stolen or a >150MB Lisp program governing US missiles.