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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: 0s | 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!
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okaleniuk ◴[23 Oct 24 07:16 UTC] No.41922635[source]▶
I once wrote a game with no graphics or sound. It was a maze game: you were supposed to lead a mouse cursor through an invisible maze by touch. If you drive your cursor into a wall, it stops. You start at the bottom, and if you manage all the way to the top - you win.

Well, it's not completely useless. If you're extremely bored at work and don't want to draw attention, this could be your time waster of choice.

replies(1): >>41923222 #
1. AlexDragusin ◴[23 Oct 24 09:06 UTC] No.41923222[source]▶
Explore this idea further, it would make a good tool for mental visualization and memorization as one would have to memorize and construct a mental image of the maze in order to speed up the solving, neat idea!