Esoteric Codes
esoteric.codes · Group blog · on HN since 2014
Daniel Temkin, an artist and programmer, writes about esoteric programming languages, their creators, and unconventional approaches to computing.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it as a great find for esolang fun, interviews and history, and the author's book grew out of its posts.
61HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
64stories submitted
920story points
3 months agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Languages, platforms, and systems that break from the norms of computing7 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 2What it's like to eat Chef programs, and other stories from multicoding esolangs6 people · 6 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Creators of ORCA and their works embracing tech minimalism and software freedom5 people · 143 points · first shared 2021 · 26 comments on HN
- 4The 128-Language Quine Relay5 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 5Monkey: The satirical Go package used unwittingly by Arduino and SalesForce4 people · 20 points · first shared 2021 · 3 comments on HN
- 6Cree#, a morphemic programming language with Cree keywords and concepts3 people · 89 points · first shared 2021 · 60 comments on HN
- 7SUBLEQ and DawnOS (2017)3 people · 75 points · first shared 2018 · 32 comments on HN
- 8Escher Circuits: Using Vision to Perform Computation3 people · 17 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 9EsoNatLangs: Esolangs that embrace the complexities of natural language3 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 10The Princeton INTERCAL Compiler's source code2 people · 144 points · first shared 2025 · 49 comments on HN
- 11Fat Dactyls2 people · 57 points · first shared 2021 · 8 comments on HN
- 12Interview with Ben Olmstead, creator of the Malbolge programming language2 people · 16 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 13Interview with David Madore2 people · 12 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Xchg rax, rax collection of assembly code snippets2 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Coding in Indigenous African Languages2 people · 6 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
vanderZwan · 2017-05-31
For more fun stuff on esolangs, I recommend Daniel Temkin's blog:
http://esoteric.codes/
Articles, languages he wrote himself, and interviews with famous esolang creators (well, famous within the subset of nerds who are into esolangs, I guess)
eternalban · 2021-05-06
https://esoteric.codes/ is a great find. Thanks for sharing.
omoikane · 2025-09-28
See also:
https://esoteric.codes/blog/forty-four-esolangs-an-artists-monograph-o…
The linked article is the preface to the book, and the book appears to be based on the collection of blog entries from https://esoteric.codes/
rottyyyyyy · 2025-09-11
Hi, I’m the author of the book and arriving (a bit late) to clarify a few things.
Although I discuss esolang history in the Spectrum piece (something I get deeper into on my blog, https://esoteric.codes), the book is a monograph of my esolangs specifically: Folders, Entropy, Olympus and more; some are collected at https://danieltemkin.com/Esolangs. It’s meant to make esolangs approachable, focusing on concept rather than technical aspects of the languages. I wrote it to encourage people to experiment with esolangs and to show the community-based nature of the work: the delightful conversation that happens when another programmer takes your language in a direction you would never have conceived of.
The languages range from fully implemented works to pieces that are not implementable (e.g. Past Tense is a language whose programs are not runnable by definition and would cease to be programs if they were https://github.com/rottytooth/PastTense). There’s one where even articulating a program into words or symbols invalidates it: only unreified thought is valid.
The languages are presented first as prompts. In the second half, I present details on those that are implemented, showing the sometimes surprising results of carrying out the initial idea. I hope it will expand the conversation around esoteric languages as an art form.
danparsonson · 2024-09-18
> ... He rests his whole argument on the premise that the operator is illiterate in Chinese, or at least has no access to the semantics of the material stored in the Room.
...and yet outputs semantically correct responses.
> That's plainly not the case with ChatGPT, or it couldn't review its previous answers to find and fix its mistakes.
Which is another way of saying, ChatGPT couldn't produce semantically correct output without understanding the input. Disagreeing with which is the whole point of the Chinese Room argument.
Why cannot the semantic understanding be implicitly encoded in the model? That is, why cannot the program I (as the Chinese Room automaton) am following be of sufficient complexity that my output appears to be that of an intelligent being with semantic understanding and the ability to review my answers? That, in my understanding, is where the genius of ChatGPT lies - it's a masterpiece of preprocessing and information encoding. I don't think it needs to be anything else to achieve the results it achieves.
A different example of this is the work of Yusuke Endoh, whom you may know for his famous quines. https://esoteric.codes/blog/the-128-language-quine-relay is to me one of the most astonishing feats of software engineering I've ever seen, and little short of magic - but at its heart it's 'just' very clever encoding. Each subsequent program understands nothing and yet encodes every subsequent program including itself. Another example is DNA; how on…
sargstuff · 2023-01-31
So, skipping over the 'tune fs'[0] for a ["lexx !yacc"] | ['less is more'] | [less filling]/[tastes great] programming might be more clear after things such as [1] as long as OpenAI forms not used.
Or perhaps not, if strange loops are a haskell [2].
But clear understandings of diffferent ways to think about language construction/programming can be found at [3][4][5] without resorting to non-math/computer science language construction/programming via Linguistics / Humanities field(s)[6][7].
[0] "You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish" : https://unixhistory.livejournal.com/1808.html?
[1] EGB : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach
[2] : Lob and mob: stange loops in Haskell (2015) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34578411
[3] Esoteric.codes : https://esoteric.codes/
[4] https://esolangs.org/wiki/Language_list
[5] A Brief Introduction to Esoteric Programming Languages' : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206055
[6] : "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages"by Guy Deutscher
[7] : "In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius" by Arika Okrent
xpointer · 2025-09-28
Also, the code for the original INTERCAL-72 compiler was recently re-discovered: https://esoteric.codes/blog/published-for-the-first-time-the-original-…
Duanemclemore · 2025-07-18
Well I've been a big fan of 100r since I heard of them through the Future of Coding [0][1](and esoteric.codes [2]).
BUT JUST NOW I'm kicking around the website again today and find out that Devine made the game Hiversaires way back in the day [3] which is a banger. So I guess I've been a fan for like 12 years. I'm very tempted to buy it again.
100r are also an inspiration that a different way of life and relationship with creativity and society are possible... so if I ever drop out definitely don't look for me doing permacomputing on a sailboat in coastal BC. Don't look for me - because I won't want to be found, ok thanks in advance?
[0] https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/044
[1] https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/045
[2] https://esoteric.codes/blog/100-rabbits
[3] https://100r.co/site/hiversaires.html
unwieldy · 2023-07-18
And an interview with Corbett, focusing on his programming language built on it, Cree# https://esoteric.codes/blog/jon-corbett
esoprogramming · 2023-07-15
2021 interview with 100r https://esoteric.codes/blog/100-rabbits
quickthrower2 · 2023-05-10
popcalc · 2022-12-13
Relevant: Suicide Linux
https://github.com/tiagoad/suicide-linux
https://esoteric.codes/blog/suicide-linux
tromp · 2022-11-09
A BLC interpreter [1] won in the 2012 International Obfuscated C Code contest [2].
BLC provides a functional busy beaver function [3] that is more fine-grained than the TM-based one.
The byte oriented version BLC8 is one of the 128 languages in the quine relay [3].
[1] https://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/tromp.c
[2] https://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/hint.html
[3] https://oeis.org/A333479
[4] https://esoteric.codes/blog/the-128-language-quine-relay
tomsmeding · 2019-01-07
This [1] claims that the random text on those pages does not actually constitute Malbolge programs. However, that does not preclude that there is some additional layer of encryption over it, or something else... :)
[1]: https://esoteric.codes/blog/a-malbolge-mystery-c0d3-attorney
lightbulbjim · 2017-02-11
Already implemented. See: http://esoteric.codes/post/123650565028/pingfs-storing-your-files-in-n…
brudgers · 2015-11-13
Interview with creator: http://esoteric.codes/post/101675489813/interview-with-ben-olmstead
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4042148
hypertexthero · 2025-02-26
Photography:
- William Klein
- Helen Levitt
- Sergio Larrain
- Jane English
- Josef Koudelka
Generative coding:
- Inigo Quilez - https://iquilezles.org/
- Shelby Wilson - https://shelby.cool/
- David OReilly - https://www.davidoreilly.com/
- Rekka and Devine - https://esoteric.codes/blog/100-rabbits
- David Whiting - https://www.vitling.xyz/