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It's no trick to make something so hard that it's impossible. It's riding the line that is interesting. Clearly, in the direction that Malbolge is hard, it is

by jerf 5y ago

It's no trick to make something so hard that it's impossible. It's riding the line that is interesting. Clearly, in the direction that Malbolge is hard, it is very nearly maximally hard. A LISP interpreter of this kind is, in general, not that hard. There are some conceptual challenges to implementation, but once your brain has absorbed those, it's not hard to implement. It's generally considered to be a good student project. Many people use it as a "hello world" program when learning a new language. Yet it took a decade+ to pop up. Much harder and you're not going to get anything, ever. Presumably, there are other directions that you could make programming hard in.

pmoriarty 5y ago
"Many people use it as a "hello world" program when learning a new language. Yet it took a decade+ to pop up." I'm sure this was largely due to not many people even bothering to try to write such a program. If Malbolge had as many users as, say, Java, I'm sure a hello world would have been written pretty quickly -- especially if these users were as motivated to write Malbolge programs as they are to write Java programs now. Not to say that programming in Malbolge is not insanely hard, but I'm not convinced that a more difficult language would be impossible to program in. Have any legendary programmers like John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Ken Thompson, Peter Norvig, Xavier Leroy, or Simon Peyton Jones spent much time trying to come up with Malbolge programs? I doubt it. If they did, would we have had a Malbolge hello world a lot sooner? Almost certainly. One of the main difficulties of esoteric programming languages is getting people to actually spend any significant amount of time trying to program in them. Most people just don't care. Get them to care and there'll be a lot more programs written in them.
- ollran 5y ago
  Esoteric programming languages are usually created to bend the boundaries of programming language design or prove something, not to be actually used to write software. It is hacker culture.

by jerf 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Many people use it as a "hello world" program when learning a new language. Yet it took a decade+ to pop up." I'm sure this was largely due to not many people even bothering to try to write such a program. If Malbolge had as many users as, say, Java, I'm sure a hello world would have been written pretty quickly -- especially if these users were as motivated to write Malbolge programs as they are to write Java programs now. Not to say that programming in Malbolge is not insanely hard, but I'm not convinced that a more difficult language would be impossible to program in. Have any legendary programmers like John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Ken Thompson, Peter Norvig, Xavier Leroy, or Simon Peyton Jones spent much time trying to come up with Malbolge programs? I doubt it. If they did, would we have had a Malbolge hello world a lot sooner? Almost certainly. One of the main difficulties of esoteric programming languages is getting people to actually spend any significant amount of time trying to program in them. Most people just don't care. Get them to care and there'll be a lot more programs written in them.

ollran 5y ago
Esoteric programming languages are usually created to bend the boundaries of programming language design or prove something, not to be actually used to write software. It is hacker culture.