Recommendation on an esoteric programming language?

Question

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What is your favorite esoteric programming language?

Hello Everyone,

If there is one esoteric programming language that you'd recommend someone to pick up (assume a C++/Perl background), which one would it be?

Arpan

Answer 1

Pure is a modern-style functional programming language based on term rewriting. It offers equational definitions with pattern matching, full symbolic rewriting capabilities, dynamic typing, eager and lazy evaluation, lexical closures, built-in list and matrix support and an easy-to-use C interface. The interpreter uses LLVM as a backend to JIT-compile Pure programs to fast native code.

(quoted from the homepage)

Answer 2

Not exactly esoteric, but have you tried Haskell? It's a departure from a traditional, sequential mindset for which C++/Perl are well suited.

Answer 3

One thing you could do might be to explore the more esoteric parts of Perl. You could use it to get acquainted with functional programming, maybe read Mark Dominius' Higher Order Perl, and get the benefit of learning some cool concepts without the pain of picking up a new language.

Answer 4

Start with LISP. (Paul Graham will tell you why.)

Spend some time with FORTH, to understand that there are ways to accomplish great results in less than 300 megabytes of drivelcode. (Note that there have been several space projects, written at Johns Hopkins, using FORTH.)

AWK does a lot of what PERL does, in a nonprocedural way, with a lot less overhead (and it looks a little less like line noise). PERL was designed to be all things to all people. AWK was intended specifically for solving small problems with small programs.

If you are just looking for utility, and quick numbers for physics lab reports, there's a lot to be said for the original Dartmouth BASIC, before Bill Gates got his hands on it.

If you are serious about reliability, you might ask yourself why Boeing used Ada for the 777, and why Pratt&Whitney uses it for ALL jet engine controllers, not just military engines, and then take a look at Ada.