Summary of A Brief Introduction to Esoteric Programming Languages

00:00:00 - 00:20:00

Esoteric programming languages are created for the purpose of artistic expression or recreation. This video introduces the concept, covers the history and syntax of these languages, and discusses their popularity. A quick demo is provided of Orca, a programming language and environment for live coding.

• 00:00:00 This video introduces the concept of esoteric programming languages, which are created for the purpose of artistic expression or recreation. It covers the history of these languages, their syntax and semantics, and some common uses. Finally, it discusses some of the reasons why these languages are popular.
• 00:05:00 Esoteric programming languages are languages that take a novel approach to solving problems, using constraints or novel computation. Some examples include Shakespeare, Brainfuck, and Orca. These languages are not well-defined, but are used to illustrate a point. Esoteric languages can be used for solving problems that are different from mainstream problems, and often have a unique cognitive model. A quick demo is provided of Orca, a programming language and environment for live coding.
• 00:10:00 This video introduces esoteric programming languages, explains how they work, and demonstrates how to code in one of them, Pearl. It demonstrates how to create a prime detector in Python, which is one of the more common languages used for code golfing.
• 00:15:00 Esoteric programming languages were designed to write useful programs, but now they have constraints like correctness, simplicity, performance, and maintainability. These languages have inspired people to make a golf scripting language, which changed the golfing community forever. Golf script is a stack-based language with only ASCII characters, and it was the first golfing site that had a more form of community building in the comments chat rooms and meta people. Then, people got the idea that golf script itself wasn't going far enough, and so they created metagolf script, an infinite family of languages each of which is identical to golf script, except for the empty input case. This led to more daring programming solutions. Esoteric programming languages have revolutionized the way we code golf.
• 00:20:00 Esso languages are created for the express purpose of coding, and as a result, have a unique culture and community. Code golf, which originated as a way to test and improve Esso language skills, has had a significant impact on the development of the languages themselves. Daniel Tempkin's "A Brief Introduction to Esoteric Programming Languages" provides an overview of the history and culture of Esso languages, as well as resources for learning more about them.