Wh… what do you mean, “originally as a joke”?

It’s in Intercal, a joke language from '70s. Mark Rendle describes it here in his talk at NDC. This whole talk is ridiculous btw.

That sounds like a fucking nightmare. I had to troubleshoot poorly-written-yet-somehow-functional GOTOs a lot when I was a BAS technician and that’s annoying enough.

Guy who worked at my place before me kept using these and GOTO statements all over the place.

His name? Cotton-eyed Joe