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Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

296 points reverseCh | 5 comments | 20 Oct 24 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.105s | source

I recently came across the concept of "useless" programs - pieces of code that serve no practical purpose but are fun, creative, or challenging to write. These could be anything from elaborate ASCII art generators to programs that solve imaginary problems. I'm curious to hear about the most interesting or creative "useless" programs the HN community has written. What was your motivation? What unexpected challenges did you face? Did you learn anything valuable from the experience? Some examples to get the ball rolling: 1. A program that prints the lyrics of "99 Bottles of Beer" in binary. A text-based game where you play as a semicolon trying to find its way to the end of a line of code. A script that translates English text into Shakespearean insults. Share your creations, no matter how quirky or impractical. Let's celebrate the joy of coding for coding's sake!
1. fanf2 ◴[20 Oct 24 16:18 UTC] No.41896392[source]▶
A combinator reduction evaluator with a translator from lambda calculus to combinators. The creative part was getting a C compiler to parse combinator expressions with the traditional syntax, where function application does not have an operator and is left-associative, like S K K. http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#1998_fanf
replies(1): >>41896623 #
2. tromp ◴[20 Oct 24 16:43 UTC] No.41896623[source]▶
Winning an IOCCC contest is far from being useless though:-)
replies(1): >>41897177 #
3. 0xf00ff00f ◴[20 Oct 24 17:55 UTC] No.41897177[source]▶
Hey, I've seen some of your IOCCC entries. Even had some fun trying to understand them back in the day.

IOCCC gang rise up. This is mine: https://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2005_persano

replies(1): >>41924946 #
4. lifthrasiir ◴[23 Oct 24 13:37 UTC] No.41924946{3}[source]▶
Somehow, I have a rather small one: https://www.ioccc.org/2012/kang/kang.c

I think I have submitted once or twice before that got won, and all other entries were excessively long to be honest. Guess a conciseness is a virtue.

replies(1): >>41926647 #
5. tromp ◴[23 Oct 24 16:29 UTC] No.41926647{4}[source]▶
> Guess a conciseness is a virtue.

Indeed; quoting from my winning entry [1] that same year:

> This program celebrates the close connection between obfuscation and conciseness, by implementing the most concise language known, Binary Lambda Calculus (BLC).

> The submission implements the universal machine in the most concise manner conceivable.

[1] https://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/hint.html