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

296 points reverseCh | 1 comments | 20 Oct 24 11:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | 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. HappMacDonald ◴[23 Oct 24 01:44 UTC] No.41920843[source]▶
text magiceye generator in JS (and another in Elm)

magiceye depth estimator in JS

FRACTRAN emulator in perl

Sigmar's Garden solitaire game solver in perl

Baba is you demake in JS

Racecar board game in Shoes (and later in awk.. though that one's not finished)

Bare-bones map editor for 4D Miner in perl (map format has probably changed since then)

Several dozen copies of "Bad Apple" rendered in TV static such that if you pause the video anywhere there is nothing to see there but static.

Minesweeper player/solver in JS (this is backwards: the program hunts for mines and asks you to give it numbers where it digs :P)

D&D dice calculator in JS

Shared/distributed D&D dice roller between untrusted parties also in JS

And on and on like that. :)