Why do "Joke" programming languages exist? [closed]
- by ThePlan
First of all please be aware this post contains some abusive language but I hope it will not bother anyone. I apologize for the bad language but that's what the name is.
As I've been doing documentation on existing programming languages attempting to make a complete list of them I stumbled across terrible programming languages, which were clearly not made for actual use and implementation due to their insane difficulty. Languages such as Brainfu*k and LOLCODE or Whitespace are fool languages because they have no real use.
For example, a "Hello world" program written in BrainFu*k. Taken from Wikipedia:
The following program prints "Hello World!" and a newline to the screen:
+++++ +++++ initialize counter (cell #0) to 10
[ use loop to set the next four cells to 70/100/30/10
> +++++ ++ add 7 to cell #1
> +++++ +++++ add 10 to cell #2
> +++ add 3 to cell #3
> + add 1 to cell #4
<<<< - decrement counter (cell #0)
]
> ++ . print 'H'
> + . print 'e'
+++++ ++ . print 'l'
. print 'l'
+++ . print 'o'
> ++ . print ' '
<< +++++ +++++ +++++ . print 'W'
> . print 'o'
+++ . print 'r'
----- - . print 'l'
----- --- . print 'd'
> + . print '!'
> . print '\n'
or another example taken from LOLCODE language:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"?
AWSUM THX
VISIBLE FILE
O NOES
INVISIBLE "ERROR!"
KTHXBYE
These languages are very difficult to learn/read/work with. My question is - Why do they exist? What is the purpose of them? Also, is there an official "name" for these type of languages?
