5. Piet
AsciiDots and Grass have nothing on Piet. Piet is a programming language in which programs actually look like abstract paintings. The language is named after Piet Mondrian, who pioneered the field of geometric abstract art.
The program is compiled by a pointer that will move around the image, from one section to the other. The code is in the color; the color is read by the compiler to turn into a program.
The below image is actually the source code for a program that will print “Hello World”. Beautiful, isnt it?
4. Whitespace
Sadly enough, most programming languages ignore or assign little meaning to different whitespace characters. This is where the Whitespace programming language nobly seeks to redress the balance. The Whitespace website states
Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren’t there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax.
Since all non-white space characters are ignored, it is possible to easily embed Whitespace programs in programs written in other languages such as C, C++, Java, etc.
Here’s an example of a “Hello Program” in Whitespace. There’s a bit of non-white color-coding that we’ve applied purely for understanding purposes:
3. Ook!
What do you get when you take a language like Brainfuck, and modify it to suit (I kid you not) orangutans? Well, you get Ook! David Morgan-Mar designed the language for orangutans. Ook! is essentially isomorphic to BrainF***, but has even fewer syntax elements.
It was created with the following stated principles in my mind :
- A programming language should be writable and readable by orang-utans.
- To this end, the syntax should be simple, easy to remember, and not mention the word “monkey”.
- Bananas are good.
To this end, Ook! consists of only the following 3 syntax elements:
Ook.Ook?Ook!
These are combined into groups of 2, to give a total of 2^3=8 usable elements, analogous to Brainfuck.
The language does not allow for comments because of the following reasoning : Since the word “ook” can convey entire ideas, emotions, and abstract thoughts depending on the nuances of inflection, Ook! has no need of comments. The code itself serves perfectly well to describe in detail what it does and how it does it. Provided you are an orang-utan.
Here’s the “Hello World” program written in Ook!:
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Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook.Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook?Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook.Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook? Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook. Ook? Ook! Ook! Ook? Ook! Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook.Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook. Ook.Ook! Ook. Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook.Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook! Ook!Ook! Ook. Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook? Ook. Ook. Ook! Ook. |
2. Malbolge
When a programming language is named after Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, you kind of realize what to expect. Malbolge is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998.
The Malbolge official website states
Malbolge was truly created with the idea that programming should be hard. It should be as close to the Infernal as a programming language possibly can be. It will continue to evolve over time, as newer, more twisted minds attack this problem. Malbolge combines elements from machine language, INTERCAL (particularly the Tri-INTERCAL variant), and BrainF***, as well as completely new and exquistely painful constructs created by some of the most sophisticatedly twisted programming minds in existence today.
Malbolge was so difficult to understand when it arrived that it took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. Indeed, the author himself has never written a single Malbolge program. The first program was not even written by a human being: it was generated by a beam search algorithm designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp.
The following Malbolge program displays “Hello World”:
(=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8d
1. Chicken
Throughout our countdown, we’ve come across several minimalistic languages that use a very small set of valid symbols. And our top spot goes to a language that uses just 1 – chicken.
Chicken is a programming language created by Doug Zonker from the University of Washington. All I can really say about it is that it consists of only 1 valid symbol – chicken! If you want to know more about the language, you can read the paper or see the presentation below (and I really suggest that you do):
Here’s the “Hello World” program written in Chicken.
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