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I majored in computer science in the area of communication technologies and I fluently speak Python, Java, C, Bash, Matlab, Octave and some others. But you guys know things I have never ever heard about like "Fish" or "R" or "Whitespace" or some kind of crazy things. Sometimes these languages are not even build by ASCII letters but by some crazy signs.
My question is: How do you get by all these things? I mean: At what point of your programming career did you say to yourself that you want to do some task in "Fish" or whatever? I mean what is the point or what was the purpose or... I am simply extremely confused by the fact that programming langues besides the big common ones (C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Lisp, JavaScript...) even exist but why in the world did you learn them so well that you can solve difficult problems with 8 Bytes of code??
PS: If someone finds a better tag, please add it mine is bad but I can't think of a better one
Alon
Posted 2017-07-25T23:18:10.877
Reputation: 247
An esoteric programming language, or esolang, is a computer programming language designed to experiment with weird ideas, to be hard to program in, or as a joke, rather than for practical use. That said, I'm pretty sure this is both off-topic and too broad and opinion based. – FryAmTheEggman – 2017-07-25T23:20:19.740
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I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because while we do programming competitions and allow tips questions for how to golf certain code or in certain languages, asking for how we get to know these languages is firstly largely opinion-based and secondly is off-topic here. Once you have 20 reputation, you might be able to find answers to your question in our general chatroom. Thanks!
– HyperNeutrino – 2017-07-25T23:21:36.78013Wait what R is a normal programming language – ASCII-only – 2017-07-25T23:21:45.500
3Also why? Because we can. Also because we don't have enough memory to have a program more than 8 bytes long :P – ASCII-only – 2017-07-25T23:22:33.583
I'm not getting the downvotes right here. Clearly my question is not a programming challenge but it targets the field and the people who participate in it? – Alon – 2017-07-25T23:23:57.977
I think this could be a good question to discuss in chat. Can a 1 rep user get access? – xnor – 2017-07-25T23:25:11.097
1It's off-topic, and we don't like off-topic posts. Like I said, chat is suitable for this because it has no validity criteria for valid answers, it's not about PPCG itself so Meta.PPCG.SE wouldn't allow this either. – HyperNeutrino – 2017-07-25T23:25:18.753
@xnor You can ask a moderator to superping the user in or grant access. Since you're a room owner, I think you can add explicit read+write access for this user. – HyperNeutrino – 2017-07-25T23:26:13.103
Of course it has criteria for a valid answer which would be a number of valid reasons why to participate in "fun programming languages" or am I wrong. Maybe I just have to swallow these downvotes and hopefully someone is willing to share despite some users labeling this as off topic – Alon – 2017-07-25T23:28:58.343
@ASCII-only Fish is also a rather normal programming language.
– Post Rock Garf Hunter – 2017-07-25T23:29:13.300@JoschKraus A criteria is for a contest. Not for a random question. – NoOneIsHere – 2017-07-25T23:29:20.227
@JoschKraus Would you be interested in a site chat invitation to ask there? – xnor – 2017-07-25T23:29:31.463
Of course! I would really like to talk with programmers with these kind of special interests! – Alon – 2017-07-25T23:30:06.227
@JoschKraus Do you have a chat profile? I can't seem to find it. – xnor – 2017-07-25T23:36:46.627
@WheatWizard Oh yeah that fish haha I keep on getting it confused with
><>– ASCII-only – 2017-07-25T23:40:16.823@xnor i do not think that you can do it. – Christopher – 2017-07-25T23:40:47.097
@JoschKraus just make a blank account on 19 other SE. In a few minutes you can join. (known bug) – Christopher – 2017-07-25T23:41:14.753
@JoschKraus Are you able to join our chat room? (link was wrong before)
– xnor – 2017-07-25T23:42:02.230@HyperNeutrino I think this would fit into meta ... but he can´t post there, can he? – Titus – 2017-07-25T23:42:31.857
@Titus he can. 1 rep users can join meta – Christopher – 2017-07-25T23:44:32.420
24IMO this question would definitely be on-topic on meta.PPCG.SE. This question is very relevant to this site and I would be in support of carefully broadening our scope to allow questions such as this on main.PPCG.SE. Given our current scope I understand the close-votes, but not the downvotes - this is reasonably written, useful question. +1 from me. – Digital Trauma – 2017-07-25T23:45:28.220