What is it you think we're doing when we write `2+2`, if not encoding an expression using something called "ASCII?" FRACTRAN simply asks us to use a different e

What is it you think we're doing when we write `2+2`, if not encoding an expression using something called "ASCII?" FRACTRAN simply asks us to use a different encoding, "Prime Factorization." :-D That being said, you ask a really, REALLY interesting question. Why not write the conversion from ASCII (or anything else) to FRACTRAN as well as whatever function we're trying to compute? The answer, I suggest, lies in what we're using FRACTRAN for. Conversion to and from ASCII is what we might call "incidental complexity," it's useful to humans, but not at the core of whatever function (e.g. Fibonacci, digits of PI, prime numbers, universal FRACTRAN interpretation) we're studying. Were we to bake ASCII encoding in, the resulting FRACTRAN program would be 95% ASCII manipulation and only 5% fibonacci (or whatever). This highlights, of course, why non-esoteric languages have tools for modularization and abstraction. When we write "Hello, World," we rely on standard libraries and other tools that do the things our program isn't about.