A couple years ago I noticed a neat bit of math relating to the modern programmer test version of fizzbuzz. I wanted to speak about it at the annual MathsJam Gathering, but plans fell through for various reasons, two years in a row. Eventually I decided to write it up as a blog post instead, just to get it out of my head.
How foolish past Luna was.
I started writing the intro to the article, covering what fizzbuzz is and where it came from, but I wasn't satisfied with just calling it a programmer test based on a children's game. I got curious as to where the game actually originated. So I started researching.
It's now late April. Since starting my research in January, I've:
- trawled the depths of Google Books and archive.org.
- found seemingly the earliest recorded version of the game (at least in english) in an 1833 book for young girls, of which I now own a modern reprint.
- found countless variations under numerous names in all sorts of books and magazines, and catalogued them all in a still-growing masterdoc.
- found seemingly the earliest computer version in a 1982 Atari game, and researched around the publisher in an (as yet unfruitful) effort to identify who actually developed it.
- found multiple versions with BASIC source code in mid-'80s microcomputer magazines.
- most recently purchased an 1850 first-edition of a book describing an early version of the game, for which the only publicly-available scans are from a later 1880 edition... and found a pencilled inscription in the front of my copy that might’ve been written by this guy
So the history section has naturally become an entirely separate article (and is still a work-in-progress).
...and I still haven't written up the neat math thing.
