Exploring the Weirdest Esoteric Programming Languages and Their Hello World Tricks

Below is a roundup of some bizarre, esoteric programming languages, each with a brief description and a “Hello World” example.

1. Piet

Piet is a language where programs are bitmap images; the interpreter reads color transitions to determine operations. To output “Hello World”, a small image is created where the color changes encode the required instructions.

2. Shakespeare

The Shakespeare language makes source code look like a Shakespearean play. Control flow is expressed with stage directions such as “Let us proceed” and conditional keywords like “if so”.

Variable, Definition

Act I: Hamlet's insults and flattery.
Scene I: The insulting of Romeo.

Juliet:
Am I better than you?

Hamlet:
If so, let us proceed to scene III.

3. Whitespace

Whitespace uses only spaces, tabs and linefeeds as syntax; different lengths and types of whitespace encode commands. The following snippet prints “Hello World”.

T    L
S S S S T    T    S S T    S T    L
...
L

4. JSFuck

JSFuck is an obfuscated subset of JavaScript that uses only six characters: [, ], (, ), ! and +. The example below evaluates to the string “y”.

(+[![]]+[+(+!+[]+(!+[]+[])[!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]+(+!+[])+(+[])+(+[])+(+[]))])[+!+[]+[+[]]]

Other fragments show how to produce “a” and the number 9.

(![]+[])[+!![]]   // Returns a
!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]   // Returns 9

5. Malbolge

Malbolge is intentionally designed to be almost impossible to program in; most code is generated by other programs. The following example outputs “Hello World”.

(=<`#9]~6ZY32Vx/4Rs+0No-&Jk)"Fh}|Bcy?`=*z]Kw%oG4UUS0/@-ejc(:'8dc