←back to thread

296 points reverseCh | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.398s | 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. QuantumSeed ◴[] No.41919963[source]
The last oddity I wrote on a whim was a C++ MFC dialog application that was a Spirograph-like epicycle/hypocycle generator. It would would generate screen art by semi-randomly generating layered epicycles and hypocycles with evolving colors. I spent an entire week of evenings tweaking that thing and adding more and more variations before I burned out on it and moved on.