The Dark Art of Programming - Writing Cursed Code

It's Halloween, programming is an art form and there's a darker side to it. Come with me in this fun video as I explore several languages that hate you and are trying to make your life difficult, before we go off down the rabbit hole and find some truly horrific examples of real programming.

There's languages that are hard to read, languages that are deliberately hard to understand with nonsensical rules and syntax. Then there's the true evil cooked up at 3am when programmers really need to get their job finished and nobody cares how they get it done.

No, this video is not just a trip through the Esolangs website picking out the usual suspects, it gets far far worse. Did you ever think regular expressions were a good idea, or write CGI programs in Perl? Maybe you're a seasoned C programmer and have had a look at the madness on display in the Obfuscated C contest.

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Credits
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[newogame]

Since I have been using C the worst thing that has happened in the wii got stuck in a buzz loop. I just held the power button down for 5 seconds.

[willofirony]

The curious effect that learning, say, Pearl are any of these esoteric languages is, once learnt, the student loudly insists that all programming must be written in that bat crazy language. It is only when one reads the assembly generated by the compiler (thanks to Godbolt's Compiler Explorer), that one can judge a language.

[jaybeemods]

and there was me thinking that Javascript and PHP were the thing of nightmares. I hadn't heard of these other languages and whats the deal with making code unreadable? lol. Very interesting video James. :)

[CletusJonesURL]

Oh snap this channel is cool! I got legit excited when i saw how many videos youve already made. I've already added like 5 to my watch later which means watch today lol

[JustinBellingerTV]

Without the intention to push hyperbole, this is the best video I've seen this year. Brilliantly done, thank you!

[dingokidneys]

That was a lot of fun. I was very interested in Forth for a while as I'd been big into HP RPN calculators at school/uni in the late 1970's. But I really got into Perl. I used it a lot in my job as an accountant (I kid you not) for converting data and producing custom reports from data on our Solaris Unix machines. It helped me migrate financial data to new systems. I loved it, cursed though it may be.

[derekchristenson]

LOL, this video was great fun, even though I didn't get around to watching it "in season." 🤣 I swear that language like "BF" exist just to piss me off every time someone decides to troll (I assume) a serious programming discussion by submitting some nonsense written in it. I also would not be surprised to learn that the whole "Obfuscated C" group was actually founded by the Devil himself, to lead the faithful computer scientists astray. ;-)

[TroyFletcherKeyboards]

Can confirm. Video is scary. Something very ominous about a perl array that doesn't even have a name.

Emojicode? This sounds like APL with more steps.

[partypooper]

Thank you for sharing that video!

I remember the Obfuscated C Contest in Dr Dobb's Journal back in the day when I was a C programmer (being paid for writing C code = impostor syndrome!)

Damn, C can be obscure!

It took me YEARS to finally understand pointers. And even now I have to think a bit to follow them. GAD!

But you didn't mention GW-BASIC!

GW-BASIC programs with READ and DATA statements FTW!!

How more classically masochistic can you be than to use GW-BASIC?

It's like whipping yourself with barbed wire while pulling your teeth out with a pliers!!

And my brother actually wrote a database program that way!
And he got it to run for 10 years in a PRODUCTION environment!

Talk about job security built in! :)

Every other language in the world is better than GW-BASIC with READ and DATA statements!

First, Bill Gates steals BASIC from Dartmouth and then he strips it of anything even remotely useful and then, READ and DATA statements. Well, if that doesn't prove he's demonic, nothing will! :)

Never mind the kids letting down your tyres (which happened to me once, too), the real horror on Halloween is Bill Gates knocking on your door, dressed as Death, making you write a program in GW-BASIC!!

[wisteela]

Excellent video. I'd love to see you cover COBOL.

[CallousCoder]

I adored Perl! I am missing MUMPS, that was a scary language too :)

[edgeeffect]

Programming a microcontroller in C? Disgusting! What's wrong with assembly language?! ;)

[ujin]

are you somehow related to Joe Armstrong?

[Lucretia]

You're wrong that C is the best language and you even say why it isn't.