01 What are Esoteric Programming Languages?

Esoteric programming language – Wikipedia

Esoteric programming languages are programming languages that were not developed for practical use, but to implement unusual language concepts. A simple operation is rare, partly languages are conceived to have as complicated as possible algorithms or an incomprehensible syntax, but often also to try out new ideas or to show unusual possibilities like extreme simplification.

With esotericism in the actual sense esoteric programming languages have something to do only after the name: Since esotericism is generally considered a synonym for devious pseudoscience, the term has been applied to those programming languages that appear equally pointless and devious in the eyes of outsiders.

GC Wizard provides the subsequent esoteric programming languages

  • Beatnik – The program looks like a poem. The words are interpreted and executed as commands based on their values according to Scrabble.
  • Brainf**k and trivial substitutes – Brainfk knows eight characters, each represents a command. Trivial substitutes are different versions of these eight commands.
  • Chef – The program looks like a cooking recipe. Variables are represented as ingredients, commands as cooking instructions.
  • Cow – The programming language has 12 commands that sound like cow sounds.
  • Deadfish – The programming language has only four characters or four commands.
  • Malbolge – The programming language with its eight commands is self-modifying, i.e. after the command execution the program code is encrypted.
  • Ook – Ook is a variation of Brainf**k , which uses only three symbols and resembles the sounds of orangutans in its representation.
  • Whitespace – Whitespace commands are combinations of the invisible characters “space”, “tab” and “newline”.