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Esoteric Programming Languages Are Fun—Until They Kill the Joke

Wired
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Esolangs are experimental, jokey, and intentionally hard-to-use languages created to push the boundaries of code.

Brainfish is a minimalist “esoteric language,” made up of just eight non-alphabetic characters.

Whitespace is an invisible language, with spaces and tabs.

Some esolangs can do everything that more responsible languages like C++ or Python can .

Frida Ghitis: Esolangs seem born of a kind of monomania , a malady that can beget Finnegans Wake .

She says many newer esolangs try to achieve esotericism by imitation and end up producing nothing more than aimless technical obfuscation.

Ghitis is skeptical of those who overtheorize the aesthetics of code.