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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: 0.205s | 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. davedx ◴[23 Oct 24 08:21 UTC] No.41922979[source]▶
I once spent a load of time making a "galactic civilization simulator" (in C!).

First it spawned a galaxy of stars using RNG.

Then it seeded civilizations at different home stars throughout the galaxy.

Then it iterated an algorithm to show how they spread, settling more and more solar systems, expanding outwards. After a certain number of centuries, solar systems became "decadent" and stopped seeding other solar systems (I showed this by rendering them a darker shade of color). Systems that bordered those of another civilization had to reach a certain high population threshold then they were able to "take over" neighbors, but IIRC I coded it so that didn't happen very often. There wasn't any real diplomacy or war system like in real video games.

I would make some tweaks to the algo, then rerun the sim, and watch the civs spread out slowly in real time. It was pretty.