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Esoteric languages are good fun, to be sure, but it's possible to take the concept a little far. Brainfuck, for example, is a great example of a minimalist Tur
by Two9A 14y ago
Esoteric languages are good fun, to be sure, but it's possible to take the concept a little far.
Brainfuck, for example, is a great example of a minimalist Turing-complete language, expressed as an esoteric. Befunge and Piet are other good examples of languages that approach programming from a different angle. Malbolge, though, is just malevolent and evil for its own sake.
I guess that's the point.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoMalbolge would be a challenge to the programming community. "Here is a language. I bet you can't make it do anything." Some people clearly like being challenged (see, for instance, the writer of the 99 bottles of beer algorithm)
- adavies42 14y agoyes, that was the design goal. intercal is supposed to be unlike any other language, brainfuck is supposed to be minimalistic, malbolge is supposed to be impossible to use.
- Deestan 14y agoThat's a nice response to the frustrating "good programmers can create working software in any language/technology - stop complaining about WPF/VB6/Delphi7/CVS" statement.
- xn13 14y agoI really meant it as a joke/proof-of-concept, rather than a challenge per se. That some people came along later and found it to be an entertaining challenge was a happy accident.
- mikeash 14y agoGiven the name (8th circle of Hell), I'm sure that's the point.