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IAP 2010 Activity


Esoteric Programming Languages
Kyle Miller
Mon Jan 25, 07:30-09:30pm, 4-237

Single session event
Prereq: A sense of humor

You've probably heard of Python, Java, and C.
These languages were developed to be usable, idiomatic, and readable.
What you've probably not heard of are those languages which test the boundaries of
language design, throw out the established requirements of real-world
programming, and create something nearly, but not quite, impossible to use.
We will look at a multitude of examples to see just what makes them esoteric,
including such innovations as INTERCAL, Brainf\\*ck, Piet, and Whitespace.
We will also briefly talk about the concept Turing-completeness to get
a grasp of what it means for a language to be powerful and come to the
conclusion that it's really not hard to be equivalent to a Turing machine.
Web: http://sipb.mit.edu/iap/obscure
Contact: sipb-iap-obscure@mit.ed
Sponsor: Student Information Processing Board
Cosponsor: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Latest update: 21-Dec-2009


MIT  
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Last update: 19 August 2010