Hell Of An Esolang!

Hell Of An Esolang!

Let us tell you the tale of the Esoteric Programming Language or ESOLANG as they are often abbreviated to. These are programming languages that are designed less for practical use and more for experimentation and even sometimes as a joke. They are deliberately hard to program in and there is a small but active community of people who are involved in this activity.

Esolangs are usually minimalistic and have as few instructions as possible. They are are brief and short. Sometimes they are themed, like being modelled on Shakespeare’s plays or based on the fictional Klingon language. They are most of the time, weird and are sometimes created purely as a joke.

One of the earliest esoteric language is INTERCAL; other more popular ones are Befunge and Brainf*#k. And perhaps the most difficult one is Malbolge.

Malbolge was invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998 and is almost impossible to use. It’s named after the eighth circle of hell from Dante’s Inferno (In picture is Botticelli’s Mappa dell’Inferno part of which is the Malebolge). There have been programmers who have made coherent use of this language but it is an extremely difficult prospect. Interestingly, Malbolge was used as a plot device in an episode of Elementary.

Look up more such languages and let us know if you come across anything interesting.

Hell Of An Esolang!

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