TRIVIAL PURSUITS

Esoteric programming languages are fun! Until they're derivative nonsense and kill the joke.

- SHEON HAN

SOME PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES helped send humans to the moon, some are cooking up new leukemia drugs, and some exist just to fuck with you. Brainfuck is a minimalist “esoteric language,” or “esolang,” made up of just eight non-alphabetic characters. Esolangs are experimental, jokey, and intentionally hard-to-use languages created to push the boundaries of code (and your buttons). In Brainfuck, part of the basic “Hello, World” program looks like .<-.<.+++.------, which makes any normal person want to say “Goodbye, World.”

Most esolangs don’t even look like computer code at all. Here’s one way to print “HI” in the Shakespeare Programming Language:

ALL THE WORLD'S A PROGRAM.

HAMLET, A MELANCHOLY PRINCE.

OPHELIA, THE VOICE OF THE MACHINE.

ACT: 1.

SCENE: 1.

[ENTER HAMLET AND OPHELIA]

OPHELIA: YOU ARE AS SWEET AS THE SUM OF A BEAUTIFUL HONEST HANDSOME BRAVE PEACEFUL NOBLE LORD AND A HAPPY GENTLE GOLDEN KING. SPEAK YOUR MIND!

HAMLET: YOU ARE AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE SUM OF BLOSSOMING LOVELY FINE CUTE PRETTY SUNNY SUMMER'S DAY AND A DELICIOUS SWEET DELICIOUS ROSE. YOU ARE AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE SUM OF THYSELF AND A FLOWER. SPEAK YOUR MIND!

[EXEUNT]

Basically, Hamlet and Ophelia are “variables” to which numerical values get assigned. The nouns “Lord” and “King” each have a value of +1, and adjectives such as “sweet” and “beautiful” act as multipliers, producing numbers that correspond to ASCII characters—“H” for Hamlet and “I” for Ophelia. “Speak your mind!” prints them.