Programming Language Fun

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Five Guys Facts

8 min readNov 19, 2016

There are a lot of programming languages out there. You’ve probably heard of many of the mainstream ones, like Java, Python, Ruby, C and JavaScript. You may have even heard of some of the less common, but still widely used ones, like Rust, Objective-C, and scala.

But, what if I told you there was a whole world of niche programming languages out there? Small languages built by one or two people, often solely for the purpose of trolling others or making computer science memes. Random languages built for the purpose of making no sense. Funny languages making fun of pop culture.

In today’s fun fact, we’re going to take a deep dive into the world of obscure programming languages.

Brainfuck

Let’s start off with a classic — Brainfuck. This language was created by Urban Muller in 1993, and here’s what code that prints “Hello World” looks like in Brainfuck.

As you may have noticed, Brainfuck is a language that only includes the following characters: “+”, “.”, “>”, “<”,“-”, “[“, “]”, and “,”. Yet, amazingly, it is Turing Complete, which essentially means that any program which can be written in any modern programming language can also be written in Brainfuck.

LOLCODE

LOLCODE is a language inspired by cats and memes. Here’s how you print “Hello World”.

In case you’re wondering how that works…

Here’s a more complex program that prints the numbers 1–11 then stops.

Notably, LOLCODE is also Turing Complete, once again meaning that you can write almost any program in LOLCODE if you want.

Trump Script

Now, for a more recent language. Trump Script is a programming language consisting of only 2,164 approved words (a combination of Trump’s favorite words and the names of politicians). Any program written in it can contain these words, and these words only. Here’s an example:

Notably, if there is an error in a Trump Script program, it will not tell you where the error occurred or what the error was. Instead, it will just print out an insult from the Donald, like “Trump doesn’t want to hear it”.

This language also has an interesting set of rules behind it:

No floating point numbers, only integers. America never does anything halfway.
All numbers must be strictly greater than 1 million. The small stuff is inconsequential to us.
There are no import statements allowed. All code has to be home-grown and American made.
Instead of True and False, we have the keywords fact and lie.
All programs must end with America is great.
Our language will automatically correct Forbes’ $4.5B to $10B.
In its raw form, TrumpScript is not compatible with Windows, because Trump isn’t the type of guy to believe in PC.
TrumpScript boycotts OS X and all Apple products until such time as Apple gives cellphone info to authorities regarding radical Islamic terrorist couple from Cal.
The language is completely case insensitive.
If the running computer is from China, TrumpScript will not compile. We don’t want them stealing our American technological secrets.
By constructing a wall (providing the — Wall flag), TrumpScript will refuse to run on machines with Mexican locales
Warns you if you have any Communists masquerading as legitimate “SSL Certificates” from China on your system.
Won’t run in root mode because America doesn’t need your help being great. Trump is all we need.

In case you were wondering — all the above is all true. Programs won’t run on PCs or Macs, and similarly won’t run if you have a machine with Mexican or Chinese certificates on it.

Shakespeare

The Shakespeare programming language was invented by Jon Aslund and Karl Hesselstörm with the aim of making a programming language that looked the least like a programming language. Here’s how you print “hello world”.

Yes — you need 30 lines to print “Hello World”. But it looks cool :) The characters in the play are variables. If you want to assign a character, let’s say Hamlet, a negative value, you put him and another character on the stage and let that character insult Hamlet.

Input and output is done be having someone tell a character to listen their heart and speak their mind. The language contains conditionals, where characters ask each other questions, and jumps, where they decide to go to a specific act or scene.

Emojicode

From the website, “Emojicode is an open source, high-level, multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language consisting of emojis, that allows you to build fast cross-platform applications while having a lot of fun. And it’s 100% real.”.

From me, “Emoji code is a programming language for bricks”.

Whitespace

Most programming languages ignore whitespace and interpret the characters you write. Whitespace ignores the characters you write and only interprets the white space. This means it is totally irrelevant what letters or numbers you write — just how many spaces are where.

Whitespace, like many of the languages here, is indeed Turing Complete.

Chef

Chef is a programming language where every program must be in the form of a recipe. Here’s the program that prints “Hello World”.

According to the auther, the design principles of this language are:

Program recipes should not only generate valid output, but be easy to prepare and delicious.
Recipes may appeal to cooks with different budgets.
Recipes will be metric, but may use traditional cooking measures such as cups and tablespoons.

Chicken

Chicken is a programming language with only 1 valid word: “chicken”. Here’s how to print “Hello World”:

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Velato

Velato is a programming language that interprets musical scores and turns them into a program. Here’s how to print “Hello World”:

The commands are determined by the pitch and order of the notes.

Piet

Finally, I give you Piet.

In Piet, you define an image, and the compiler runs a program based on interpreting the color of each pixel, and the layout of those pixels. The above prints “Hello World”. I encourage you to visit the link and try to understand how it works.