Let's Take Esoteric Programming Languages Seriously

Let's Take Esoteric Programming Languages Seriously

From Feeling of Computing by Ivan Reese, Jimmy Miller, and Lu Wilson

September 27, 2025 · 1h 54m

About this episode

The episode discusses the significance of esoteric programming languages and their reflective nature in programming.

One of the biggest goals of this show — our raisin detour, if you will — is to encourage people to look at computer programming differently. It's not just a job, or a way to make the computer do what you want. Code isn't just the material you sculpt into apps and games and websites. The very act of programming itself, and the languages we make and use to do that programming, reflect who we are as people. Programming languages say something. Esolangs — esoteric programming languages — are programming languages created for these more self-reflective purposes. To some, they're defined by what they're not: not for serious use, not for education, not for efficiency. To others, they're a bunch of funny jokes that people can commiserate through after suffering the steep learning curve of becoming a programmer. A few find in them an opportunity to explore strange computational models, or baffling syntax designs. But is there more to them? Could there be? In this episode, we're discussing a preprint of the paper Let's Take Esoteric Programming Languages Seriously by Jeremy Singer and Steve Draper, and struggling with what it even means to give esoteric languages…

People in this episode

Hosts: Ivan Reese, Jimmy Miller, Lu Wilson

Topics covered

  • esoteric programming languages
  • programming
  • computer science
  • self-reflection
  • computational models

Keywords

  • esolangs
  • programming languages
  • computer programming
  • syntax designs
  • learning curve

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