Description
Book SynopsisExplore the wonderful, wild, and often weird world of esoteric programming languages. Beginning with the history and theory of programming languages, addressing concepts like Turing machines and Turing completeness. Then a tour of three 'atypical' programming languages, real languages that are unusual and require out of the box thinking. Then, five chapters on existing esoteric languages (esolangs). Finally, the remaining chapters detail the development and use of two entirely new programming languages.
Trade Review"A fascinating and thought-provoking tour through programming languages.
Strange Code guides you through some mostly forgotten languages—such as Forth, SNOBOL, and CLIPS—before exploring more experimental languages—such as Piet—where your source code is an image. I particularly enjoyed Firefly, a language for the BBC micro:bit, created especially for the book."
—Sean McManus, Author of Mission Python: Code a Space Adventure Game!
"[Gives] a grounding in the basics of concepts like Turing Completeness without leaving readers to fend for themselves in a forest of of dense computer science arcana. As a reference and source for teachers,
Strange Code has much to commend it."
—Terry Freedman, Teach Secondary magazineTable of ContentsPart I: On Programming Languages
Chapter 1: A Cherry-Picked Review of Programming Languages
Chapter 2: The Essentials of Programming Languages
Chapter 3: Turing Machines and Turing Completeness
Part II: Atypical Programming Languages
Chapter 4: Forth
Chapter 5: SNOBOL
Chapter 6: CLIPS
Part III: Esoteric Programming Languages
Chapter 7: The ABCs of ABCs
Chapter 8: FRACTRAN
Chapter 9: Piet
Chapter 10: Brainfuck
Chapter 11: Befunge
Part IV: Homegrown Esolangs
Chapter 12: Filska
Chapter 13: Using Filska
Chapter 14: Firefly
Chapter 15: Using Firefly
Chapter 16: Going Further
Appendix A: Genetic Programming with Firefly
