Talk:Esoteric programming language

From Esolang

[edit] Which languages are considered esoteric?

This article states What is possibly most indicative is that the language was not designed for a particularly "serious" or "productive" purpose, as mainstream languages are, and I think that is a good clarification. But how about the Arbol programming language? It definately has an esoteric feel to me, but it is also clearly designed for a "serious" purpose. Should it be included in the wiki (I think it should) --Rune 18:27, 25 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Hmmm, it's pretty hard to define whether something is an esolang or not. That is a good definition, though. It's also worth mentioning what the author him/herself says; does he/she think the language as an esolang. And, of course the fact how easy the language is to use; how much effort it does take to do something quite simple. This language in question looks quite obscure to me (but that is perhaps mostly because I have no knowledge (or interest) in functional programming languages). The author seems to know of esolangs, and has mentioned the language being inspired by some of them such as Unlambda, Lazy K, Joy, Iota, and Zot. The example section seems 'esoteric' as well, having a quine as an example, which is not that usual in the "mainstream language" specifications. I guess this could be defined as esolang, as well. --Keymaker 18:41, 25 Feb 2006 (GMT)

You must mean Jot, not Joy.

I think we should err on the side of inclusivity. I have also floated the idea of covering serious languages on this wiki. There are pages saying that such-and-such was inspired by {Forth,Lisp,Haskell,...} and it seems silly that we have nothing to say about these. --Graue 01:03, 28 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Agreed. I have also thought about making a LISP article as there are several references to it (and other "real" languages), and as long as they don't appear in the language list I think that would be a good idea. I recently made links to LISP and some other serious languages I mentioned in an article, but they were edited away, so I guess not everyone agrees they should be here. --Rune 11:37, 28 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Maybe the articles on real languages should start with something like This articles deals with [Language] as it relates to esoteric programming. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on this subject. --Safalra 12:20, 1 Mar 2006 (GMT)

That is an excellent idea Safalra, I second. --Keymaker 09:14, 2 Mar 2006 (GMT)

I've created Template:Serious to use if no-one objects to the idea. To use it just include {{serious}} at the start of the relevant page. --Safalra 15:26, 2 Mar 2006 (GMT)

Maybe add section for semi-esoteric programming language, as well as other things that use ideas from these esoteric programming languages. What about GASM? GASM is a Generalized Assembler. You can use it if you don't have assembly language for certain systems or emulators (such as QGA) and you can also use Brainfuck to write macros with it. For example, if you want all the text strings in reverse, then you can do:

'text\macro(,[>,]<[.<])\endmacro
#0"Hello World!"/text