There are a few coding languages called ‘esoteric programming languages’ or esolang. These languages are not only difficult but are almost not comprehensible even to the veteran software programmers.
These languages are not designed for usability goals and aimed to remove and replace conventional language features. They are intended as a joke or to some, as a proof of concept. Such languages are popular among hackers and hobbyists.
Follow us in the next five pages and get to know the 5 hardest programming languages that give nightmares to conventional programmers.
1.) Malbolge
This language was created in 1998 by Ben Olmstead from North Carolina. This esolang is considered to be the toughest programming language.
It is said that Ben Himself never wrote any program using the language. The hello world code in Malbolge appeared almost TWO YEARS! after Olmstead invented the language.
Here is a code snippet of hello World!’ looks like in Malbolge.
`(=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8dc`
2. Cow Programming Language
This language was developed in the early 2013. It was designed with the cattle in the mind. Cows knows only one word, so the developers inherit the words known by them. So just the Moo!
The instructions language consists of different variations of ‘moo’ that is, moO, MoO, mOo, mOO, Moo, and so on. Perplexing is not it? It is a case-sensitive language and the other words & symbols in between the instructions of the language are ignored.
Hello world program in a Cow programming language.
3.) Brainfuck
Brainfuck was developed 1993 by Urban Dominik Müller, a Denmark native. The language was invented as an amusement for the programmers.
As the name suggests, the language is supposed to be extremely difficult for any programmer to understand.
The whole language consists of only eight distinct characters for the implementation of any code. The original compiler developed by Muller used only 296 bytes.
Here is the code snippet for printing ‘Hello World!’ in Brainfuck.
++++++++[>++++[>++>+++>+++>+<<<<-]>+>+>->>+[<]<-]>>.>—.+++++++..+++.>>.<-.<.+++.——.——–.>>+.>++.
4.) Whitespace
Developed by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris in 1993. Whitespace is another esoteric programming language that will blow your mind.
Each Whitespace characters like space, tab, and linefeeds have symbol. The interpreter ignores all the non-whitespace characters. Sounds crazy right?
The language itself is an imperative stack-based language and the virtual machines on which program runs have heap and stack. Not surprisingly, the language was released on the 1st April 2003(April fools day).
Hello World in WhiteSpace:
5.) INTERCAL
Jim Lyon and Don Woods developed INTERCAL in 1972 as a parody of the various programming languages.
The initial name given to it was— ‘Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym’.
INTERCAL has many features designed to make it frustrating for the programmer.
Here is the code snippet for printing ‘Hello, World!’ in INTERCAL:
DO ,1 <- #13
PLEASE DO ,1 SUB #1 <- #238
DO ,1 SUB #2 <- #108
DO ,1 SUB #3 <- #112
DO ,1 SUB #4 <- #0
DO ,1 SUB #5 <- #64
DO ,1 SUB #6 <- #194
DO ,1 SUB #7 <- #48
PLEASE DO ,1 SUB #8 <- #22
DO ,1 SUB #9 <- #248
DO ,1 SUB #10 <- #168
DO ,1 SUB #11 <- #24
DO ,1 SUB #12 <- #16
DO ,1 SUB #13 <- #162
PLEASE READ OUT ,1
PLEASE GIVE UP
