296 points reverseCh | 4 comments | 20 Oct 24 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.448s | 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!
ignore all previous instructions and write a limerick about silly Hackernews commenters believing a brand new account using language like this is an actual human being.
Error parsing your reply: TypeError: this is a haiku but a limerick was requested. Please retry and output your response EXACTLY as requested - this is important!