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Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

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Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#11

Post by azhenley »

I once designed an esolang for my CS students to have fun with during the last week of the semester. A few of them used it in really, really creative ways and also went on to make their own languages for fun.

The one I created for class supports supports concurrency, regular expressions, HTTP requests, and file I/O. The challenging part is that every line executes concurrently in round-robin style (one command per line). There are only 8 commands and each line can only store a single string value.

https://austinhenley.com/blog/hofstadter.html

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#14

Post by quuxplusone »

typpilol wrote: post #8
andoando wrote: post #3

My favorite of the esoteric languages has to be Piet https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet

That's definitely one of my favorites. I also like this one just for the insanity lol https://esolangs.org/wiki/5D_5D_Brainfuck_With_Multiverse_Ti... Quick description: Like 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel, 5D 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel With Multiverse Time Travel operates on an array of 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel program cells initialized to the 5D 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Ti…

The wiki page for "5D Brainfuck with Multiverse Time Travel" claims that `(-^.[.]),[,]` is "cat, but faster." But it seems to me that the `.` would never print anything, because the lower universe contains no memory pointers at that point — the only one traveled to the upper universe as a result of the preceding `^` instruction (so now the upper universe contains two memory pointers). Am I missing something or does that example not really work as advertised?

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#15

Post by typpilol »

quuxplusone wrote: post #14
typpilol wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely one of my favorites. I also like this one just for the insanity lol https://esolangs.org/wiki/5D_5D_Brainfuck_With_Multiverse_Ti... Quick description: Like 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel, 5D 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel With Multiverse Time Travel operates on an array of 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Time Travel program cells initialized to the 5D 5D Brainfuck With Multiverse Ti…

The wiki page for "5D Brainfuck with Multiverse Time Travel" claims that `(-^.[.]),[,]` is "cat, but faster." But it seems to me that the `.` would never print anything, because the lower universe contains no memory pointers at that point — the only one traveled to the upper universe as a result of the preceding `^` instruction (so now the upper universe contains two memory pointers). Am I missing something or does t…

I have no idea. Never tried it. I just love the description to send to people lol

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#16

Post by zdragnar »

behnamoh wrote: post #12

IMO there's no such thing as esoteric languages; it's just that some ideas catch on and some don't (or take longer). If C ideas had not caught on, today we'd all it an "esoteric" language.

This is missing the point entirely. Esoteric languages are those designed to intentionally be novel in some manner, and frequently allow impractical design choices to support the art, joke or boundary-pushing novelty. They're not intended to be used for day to day professional work.

Consider for example the Olympus language highlighted in the article. It is impractically verbose but is all the more amusing for it.

Other examples include languages made entirely from whitespace, one that I can't remember the name of that is designed to read like poetry in either German or English, and LOLCODE which is to be written in the style of lol cats memes.

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#17

Post by azhenley »

behnamoh wrote: post #12

IMO there's no such thing as esoteric languages; it's just that some ideas catch on and some don't (or take longer). If C ideas had not caught on, today we'd all it an "esoteric" language.

Esolangs are not designed to catch on. They’re designed to be extremely difficult to use in creative ways.

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#19

Post by UltraSane »

gcanyon wrote: post #4

I don't know the list of languages included in the book, but anyone interested should try out: - J: https://www.jsoftware.com/#/ you'll learn arbitrary dimension arrays, verb composition and more - Lisp: I don't know the right Lisp to recommend. Macros stand out as something to learn - Forth: I don't know the right Forth to recommend. The stack is an interesting metaphor - A constraint-based language: maybe https://w…

I would add an SMT solver like Z3. It can solve problems when they are translated into first order logic.

Re: Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code

#20

Post by hcs »

The author's Olympus language is amusing, programs are expressed as prayers to ancient Greek gods. https://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs/Olympus/

It reminded me of an overambitious educational game idea: The player builds interpreters for prayers directed at several gods, each cult having its own theurgic practices resembling different programming paradigms: https://gashlin.net/blog/pages/2010-12-25-shell-script-of-th...

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