Talk:Esoteric programming language

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Contents 1 Unlambda vs. Brainfuck 2 Perl? 3 Turing tarpit 4 Intention of beong adopted for real-world programming 5 Esoteric programming terms 5.1 Prososed merge from Discrete computer 6 Joke languages? 7 removed a sentence 8 Formatting of multiple article titles

[edit] Unlambda vs. Brainfuck

I don't see any clear basis for saying Unlambda is more minimal than brainfuck. It would be correct to say it about Lazy K or Iota or the like. It's tricky comparing imperative languages to functional ones, but whereas brainfuck has eight commands in four matching pairs, Unlambda has a mixed bag of eleven or twelve functions, plus an application operation. So I'm going to delete the statement.

[edit] Perl?

I noticed that Perl is listed as a "notable esoteric language". Is that a joke? The top of the article specifically says that languages like APL aren't considered esoteric. --Piquan 23:57, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You mean it's possible to write comprehensible code in Perl? ;) --Fredrik | talk 00:33, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More so than in APL. --Piquan

In my book Perl is not an esoteric language. There can be made many arguments about the readability of Perl code, but that does not make it esoteric. It is, after all, a very commonly used language. --Runeberge 07:20, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that was a joke. It's the only recent edit by 81.210.122.50. I've removed it (and the comment tag that was after that line). (cute, though. And we didn't even blink...) --RJFJR 22:08, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Turing tarpit

I question the etymology of Turing tarpit; the term is in fact due to Alan Perlis, who coined it well before the Whril language ever existed.

[edit] Intention of beong adopted for real-world programming

I think that 'not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming' in introduction section is inappropriate and not true; There are several esolangs invented to test the concepts in programming before applying them to real programming such as 3code, which means esolangs are sometimes used to play a role of touchstone. I think some other expression like 'not with the intention of being directly used for real-world programming' describes esolang better. --218.233.56.240 05:33, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Esoteric programming terms

[edit] Prososed merge from Discrete computer

I have added a tag proposing that Discrete computer be merged into the Esoteric programming terms section of this article. The term doesn't seem to warrant its own article, at least not with the article in its current state, and this would seem to be the best place for the text. Please post comments on the proposal here. - N (talk) 18:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. Wrong article. Maybe digital computer? --maru (talk) Contribs 22:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. There's no reason to put discrete computer here; there's nothing esoteric about it. (Continuous computers also aren't esoteric in this sense.) Perhaps we should create an "alternative computer design" page or something to hold differences between discrete vs continuous, Von Neumann vs everything else, quantum computers, etc etc. Piquan 17:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've removed the tag. If anyone would like to have a go at doing something with the article, please do. - N (talk) 19:26, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't "...and still the most elegant" (History section) a smidge POV? Not to mention bad grammar. How about "...and are considered the most elegant"?

[edit] Joke languages?

The article mentions the existence of joke languages, yet doesn't go into any more depth than that. Should examples be included?

I propose:

• 99 [1] was created solely for 99-bottles-of-beer.net, and a blank file outputs the song
• Whitespace [2] treats characters opposite of most other languages, with spaces, tabs, and newlines being the only valid syntax.

--BBM 03:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed a sentence

In the May 19 2006 revision [3], the last sentence in the second paragraph of the opening reads:

Thus, by adhering to some principles while deliberately making no sense as a whole (or attempting to hide any sense they make to most people), these languages are perhaps the programming equivalent of nonsense verse.

I'm not quite convinced at this comparison. Especially after skimming thru the article on "nonsense verse" the sentence linked to, I'm hard-pressed to find a good connection between the two. The sentence also suffers from being vague about what "making no sense as a whole" actually mean? A programming language's syntax and semantics, even for most if not all esoteric programming languages, are still highly specified and well-defined, so in that aspect there is nothing "nonsensical" about an esoteric language. Similarly, the fact that it might not be very human-readable is not a convincing criteria of "nonsensical" — just because you cannot read, say, Chinese, doesn't mean it is a nonsensical language, right? (Besides, obsfucation is quite possible in rather conventional languages such as C anyway.)

So overall, I just see little value in this sentence and have taken the bold step to remove it. If anyone wants to add it back in, please consider significantly rephrasing it to avoid the issues I've raised. 24.16.27.166 12:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting of multiple article titles

Why are the words "programming language" included as part of the article names for the esoteric programming languages? (See Category:Esoteric programming languages to understand what I mean. When we title an article, any text apart from the name of whatever the article is about is placed in brackets. So instead of TRUE programming language, the article should be titled TRUE, and instead of Lambda programming language, it should be Lambda (programming language) and linked to as disambiguation from the Lambda article. (Assuming Lambda programming language itself survives AfD, but that's not the point.)

This would bring the esoteric languages into consistency with the more familiar ones, such as C++, Visual Basic, Java (programming language) and a whole bunch of others. BrokenBeta [talk · contribs] 16:16, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• And on a separate note, why can't I link to a category? BrokenBeta [talk · contribs] 16:17, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

You're not quoting the category right. To quote a category, so it doesn't act as a category but as a link to that category, append a colon, as in "[[:Category:Esoteric programming languages]]". -- Gwern (contribs) 18:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks. BrokenBeta [talk · contribs] 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)