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  • Showing only topics with the tag "rulebreaking". Back to normal view
    1. Breaking all the rules

      In most of my programming, I try and remain professional, and do things in a readable, maintainable way, that doesn't involve pushing the language to breaking point. But, occasionally, I give...

      In most of my programming, I try and remain professional, and do things in a readable, maintainable way, that doesn't involve pushing the language to breaking point.

      But, occasionally, I give myself free reign. What if you didn't care about the programmer who came after you? What if you didn't care about what a programmer should do in a certain circumstance?

      For myself, over the years I've written and rewritten a C library, I like to call CNoEvil. Here's a little taste of what you could do:

      #define EVIL_IO
      #define EVIL_COROUTINE
      #include "evil.h"
      
      proc(example, int)
        static int i = 0;
        coroutine();
        While 1 then
          co_return(++i);
        end
        co_end();
        return i;
      end
      
      Main then
        displayln(example());
        displayln(example());
      end
      

      (And yes, that compiles. Without warnings. Even with -Wpedantic.)

      So... Here's the challenge:

      Ignoring the rules, and best practices... How can you take your favourite programming language... And make it completely unrecogniseable?

      (Might be best to choose a language with macros, like Nim, Rust, any of the Lisps. Though, you can still do some impressively awful things in Java or Python, thanks to overloading inbuilt classes.)

      Challenge Ideas:

      • Make Python look like C
      • Make Java look like Python
      • Make anything look like BrainFuck

      I don’t know how to really explain my fascination with programming, but I’ll try. To somebody who does it, it’s the most interesting thing in the world. It’s a game much more involved than chess, a game where you can make up your own rules and where the end result is whatever you can make of it. - Linus Torvalds

      21 votes