Programming Languages For The Warped Minds

So you think assembly language would pop your brains out of your skull? Think again. With quite a number of programming languages in existent, more than a dozen of them can freak and squeeze the brains out of your system!

Esoteric Programming Languages

The word "esoteric" defines as something that has been created for only a small number of peeps. Esolangs, as they are usually called, are most likely designed to experiment with weird ideas and often extremely difficult if you are to write a source code. We have selected some most notable esolangs for this article, however, if your curiosity tells you to go beyond - the "Esolangs Wiki" gives you a list of these programming languages.
Be advised that Esolangs Wiki is not in any way associated with The Non-Technical Technical Support. You may need to power up your imagination if you want to grasp the basic concepts of these esoteric programming languages.

Behold, TNTTS' List if Notable Esolangs

1. Befunge:

   Back in 1993, one nerdy guy called Chris Pressey created this esolang for Commodore's Amiga systems. Although there are other variants, Befunge-93 was the original stuff created by Chris way back then. Chris' goal for Befunge was to make it as hard to compile as possible. This programming language was never intended for writing an operating system or any application that would be of practical use. This is more of an "amuse your friends or colleagues" kind of programming language.
   Befunge's source code would look like garbage in the eye of those who are used to high-level programming languages. It's "Hello World!" for example:
   

   "!dlroW olleH">:#,_@

   
   Whenever a computer executes a program, it has some kind of "Instruction Pointer" - let's just call it IP. It points every instruction in a program and then the computer executes it one at a time. In Befunge's "Hello World!" example above, the IP first encounters the quotation mark (") character. This tells Befunge to start it's string mode feature - which will push each following character's ASCII value all the way up to the next instance of another quotation mark ("). The greater than (>) character tells Befunge's IP to start moving towards the right. Based on the example, the IP will then move to the right and encounter the colon punctuation (:), which means a "duplicate" instruction in this esolang - it takes whatever is at the top of the stack and makes a copy of it.
   The number sign (#) is some kind of "trampoline" command. This tells the compiler or interpreter to skip next cell. The comma (,) in our example is the one responsible for popping out the value and displaying it as ASCII character. The underscore (_) character is some kind of "horizontal if", which pops the top item off the stack; if it is 0, tells the IP to go right, otherwise it tells the IP to go left. The "at sign" or "address sign" (@) means end of the program.
   You bet, the "Hello World!" example is some kind of loop that displays all the letters until there are no more letters left to display. The fact that this language allows its IP to roam in dimensions through the source code, an easier (to understand) version of "Hello World!" goes like this:
   
   
   Rows and columns are to be treated as imaginary in order to get the concept of loop and trampolines. You may start running the code mentally starting from the upper left, then to right, then down, and then loops. Go figure!
   
   More Befunge articles from the links below:
   http://bef-93.blogspot.com/2014/06/bef-93-tutorial.html
   http://www.bedroomlan.org/tools/befunge-playground#prog=hello,mode=edit
   
   
   
   

2. Brainfuck:

   Yes you read it all right. There exist a programming language that bears the name that you just saw. It was the same year Befunge was created when Urban Müller got hit by some cosmic boredom. Thus, the birth of Brainfuck Programming Language. Urban was known for his being minimalist - so minimalist that he created Brainfuck to utilize only 8 characters. Eight, as in 8 freaking characters are all you you need to create a working program with it. These characters are less than (<), greater than (>), plus (+), minus (-), period (.), comma (,), opening square bracket ([), and closing square bracket (]).
   This programming language's source code can make you freak out as this is how "Hello World!" is written:
   

   
   ++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-] >++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++. >.+++.------.--------.>+.>.
   

   
   
   In Brainfuck, the 8 characters mentioned would have these functionality:
   • The plus (+) symbol increases the value of the current cell by one.
   • The minus (-) symbol decreases the value of the current cell by one.
   • The greater than (>) symbol moves the data pointer to the next cell on the right.
   • The less than (<) symbol moves the data pointer to the next cell on the left.
   • The period or dot (.) symbol prints out the ASCII value of the current cell. Those same values that you see on those ASCII codes table that you can easily Google.
   • The comma (,) reads a single input character into the current cell.
   • For the opening square bracket ([) symbol, if the value of the current cell is zero, then the instruction skips to the corresponding closing square bracket (]). Otherwise, move to the next instruction.
   • The closing square bracket (]) would be the opposite of it opening square bracket. What this does is If the value of the current cell is zero, it moves to the next instruction. Otherwise, the IP will move backwards in the instructions to the corresponding opening bracket ([).
   
   TNTTS will not go step by step on how that Brainfuck source code actually displayed the words "Hello World!". Explaining every plus (+) symbol in that source code will take us about 2 or 3 pages. This is not a Brainfuck tutorial article in the first place.
   
   If you wish to explore more about this programming language, you might want to check these 2 websites shown below:
   https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/brainfuck/
   http://fatiherikli.github.io/brainfuck-visualizer/
   
   
   
   

3. Chef:

   In the Chef programming language, your source codes would literally look like recipes. TNTTS never got to try to code in Chef, but based on their official website - which still exists today:
   http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/chef.html
   The "Hello world!" crap could be written as:
   

   
   Hello World Souffle.
   
   This recipe prints the immortal words "Hello world!", in a basically brute force way. It also makes a lot of food for one person.
   
   Ingredients.
   72 g haricot beans
   101 eggs
   108 g lard
   111 cups oil
   32 zucchinis
   119 ml water
   114 g red salmon
   100 g dijon mustard
   33 potatoes
   
   
   Method.
   Put potatoes into the mixing bowl. Put dijon mustard into the mixing bowl. Put lard into the mixing bowl. Put red salmon into the mixing bowl. Put oil into the mixing bowl. Put water into the mixing bowl. Put zucchinis into the mixing bowl. Put oil into the mixing bowl. Put lard into the mixing bowl. Put lard into the mixing bowl. Put eggs into the mixing bowl. Put haricot beans into the mixing bowl. Liquefy contents of the mixing bowl. Pour contents of the mixing bowl into the baking dish.
   
   Serves 1.
   

   
   
   
   

4. COW:

   Yet another weird programming language showed up in 2003, and was the brainchild of someone named Sean Heber. The COW programming language was most probably created this way to provide a good dose of laughter to anyone who might be interested. COW has eight commands / syntax that we can use to create working programs, check them out and share your thoughts:
   
   • moo: Coordinates with the MOO command. During normal execution, it searches the program code for a matching MOO in reverse, then begins executing again starting from the MOO command it found.
     When searching. Further, the instructions that are immediately before it are skipped.
   • mOo: Moves the current memory position back one block.
   • moO: Moves the current memory position forward one block.
   • mOO: This command executes the value in current memory block as if it were an instruction, and COW base it on the instruction code value. One example would be, if the current memory block's value is 2, the moO command is then executed. If COW encounters an invalid command, it exits the program. A value of 3 would be invalid as this would bring us an infinite loop.
   • Moo: If the current memory block's value is 0, this command would read a single ASCII character from STDIN, and then store this single ASCII character in the current memory block. If the value is not 0, the ASCII character is then printed to STDOUT.
   • MOo: Decreases the value of the current memory block by 1.
   • MoO: Increases the value of the current memory block by 1.
   • MOO: If the current memory block's contains a 0, COW will skip to the next command and resume execution after it finds the next matching moo in your code. If it is not 0, COW then continues with whatever the next command is. How it finds the next moo goes this way. For example, "OOO MOO moo moo" - COW will match with the second moo and not the first.
   • OOO: This command sets the current memory block value to 0.
   • MMM: If register has no current value in it, this command will just copy whatever is the current memory block. Otherwise, COW will paste that value into the current memory block and clear the register.
   • OOM: This should allow us to print the current value of the memory block to STDOUT as an integer.
   • oom: This would read an integer from STDIN, then place this value into the current memory block.
   
   In COW, the immortal "Hello, world!" is written like this:
   

   
   MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo Moo MoO MoO MoO Moo OOO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MoO MoO MoO Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo MOo Moo OOO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO MoO Moo
   

   
   Here's a hint. Count the instances of the MoO command before it reaches the first instance of Moo, 72 MoO(s) right? 72 is the ASCII code for the uppercase "H". After the first Moo, another 29 MoO(s) would follow. 72 + 29 gives you 101, and 101 is the ASCII for the lowercase "e". If you're curious and diligent enough, you should figure out how this freaking code displays the "Hello, world!".
   Check it out on this website:
   http://www.frank-buss.de/cow.html
   
   
   
   

5. Whitespace:

   
   University of Durham's Edwin Brady and Chris Morris unveiled this programming language in April Fool's Day of 2003. While most programming languages we know ignore spaces and whatnot, the Whitespace programming language is way above them all - LOL. This programming language will only read three mystical characters: the TAB (the space that your keyboard produce on your text editor when you press the TAB button), the character that your SPACEBAR produce, and LINE FEED (the space that your keyboard's ENTER produce).
   Curious about how "Hello, world!" is written in Whitespace? See below:
   

   
   

   
   SSSTSSTSSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSSTSTL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSTTSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSTTSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSTTTTL
   TL
   SSSSSTSTTSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTSSSSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTTSTTTL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSTTTTL
   TL
   SSSSSTTTSSTSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSTTSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTTSSTSSL
   TL
   SSSSSTSSSSTL
   TL
   SSL
   L
   L
   

   
   

   
   S is Spacebar, T is Tab, and L is Linefeed. Paste the code on your text editor and remove all instances of S, T, and L then replace them with their respective Whitespace values. Then paste what's left on the Whitespace emulator site using the link below:
   http://ws2js.luilak.net/interpreter.html
   Further, more Whitespace stuff on their official website:
   http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/tutorial.html
   
   
   
   

6. Malbolge:

   In 1998, Ben Olmstead released his freaking programming languages which he named Malbolge. The nerd Mr. Olmstead named his programming language after Malebolge. If you're a Dante's Inferno fanatic, Malebolge will ring a bell as the Ninth Circle of Hell. This programming language is so difficult that just displaying the "Hello World!" shit goes this way:
   

   
   (=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8dc
   

   
   Copy the hellish codes above and it on this nifty online Malbolge interpreter to see for yourself:
   http://www.malbolge.doleczek.pl/.
   Malbolge's original website no longer exists on the front end of World Wide Web. Luckily, a backup can always be found on our good old trusty Wayback Machine Archive:
   http://web.archive.org/web/20000815230017/http:/www.mines.edu/students/b/bolmstea/malbolge/
   
   
   
   

Reference(s) / Test Environment(s):

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1. Tested using Google Chrome and Firefox on Windows 10 (64-bit).
2. All other site references are mentioned as you go through the article.