Timeline of esoteric programming languages
From Esolang
What follows is an attempt at a timeline of esoteric programming languages. Any notable languages should be included. Languages that have not yet garnered much attention are omitted.
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[edit] 1964
Corrado Böhm publishes a paper describing P''. While not intended as an esoteric programming language, P'' would later become an item of interest to esoteric programmers upon the revelation that it is almost identical to Brainfuck, invented 29 years later.
[edit] 1972
Donald R. Woods and James M. Lyon come up with INTERCAL, a programming language designed to have nothing in common with existing programming languages of the day. INTERCAL is considered the first true esoteric programming language.
[edit] 1991
Biota, presumably the first two-dimensional esolang, is invented by Ward Cunningham and sold for a net profit.
[edit] 1993
False, a Turing tarpit with a 1024-byte compiler, is invented by Wouter van Oortmerssen. Later on, Urban Müller invents Brainfuck, outdoing False with only eight instructions and a compiler just over 200 bytes.
Chris Pressey invents Befunge during this year. He and many other esoteric programmers, unaware of Biota, consider Befunge the first two-dimensional programming language. The version of Befunge created this year is now called Befunge-93. Due to its limitation of 80x25 for code size, it is not Turing-complete.
[edit] 1994
Chris Pressey comes up with SMETANA, in which programs are series of steps like "Go to step n." and "Swap step a with step b." Being fairly useless, SMETANA is not given much attention.
[edit] 1997
The Befunge-97 variant of Befunge is created. This standard turns out to be a turkey and is not widely implemented.
Chris Pressey, Ben Olmstead, and John Colagioia invent Wierd, a two-dimensional language based on wires, which represents instructions using changes in direction in the wires. Some controversy exists as to whether wires should be allowed to cross in Wierd.
[edit] 1998
Funge-98, a generalization of Befunge, is standardized. The specification allows for funges in other dimensions: Unefunge in 1D, Trefunge in 3D, etc. Unlike Befunge-93, the new Befunge created by Funge-98 is Turing-complete.
Ben Olmstead invents Malbolge, the first recorded instance of a programming language designed to be as difficult as possible to program in. Worried that Malbolge may in fact be too hard, he goes on to invent Dis.
[edit] 1999
Unlambda is created, the first esoteric functional language.
[edit] 2000
John Colagioia invents Thue, the first prominent example of a string-rewriting language (although not the first to exist).
Jeffry Johnston describes BitChanger, the first one-bit version of Brainfuck, with a total of four instructions.
[edit] 2002
Nikita Ayzikovsky comes up with Smallfuck, a simplified Brainfuck with bounded storage and no IO. Although the language is not especially powerful, it can be compiled into SMETANA, a language previously thought to be entirely useless.
[edit] 2003
Edwin Brady and Chris Morris invent Whitespace, which achieves some notoriety after being posted to the front page of Slashdot on April 1st.
Kipple is invented, and turns out to be the first esolang to rise to prominence in which the use of stacks is a defining characteristic.
In August, Francis Rogers invents PATH, a two-dimensional language bearing a strong instruction-set resemblance to Brainfuck. In September, Daniel Brockman refines the idea with SNUSP, a more orthogonal variant.
[edit] 2005
Renewed interest in the wire-crossing problem, previously considered with regards to the languages Befunge and Wierd, brings about the two-dimensional languages Beturing, in which wires cannot cross, and Archway2, to which Brainfuck programs can be converted without crossing wires.
Chris Pressey writes a compiler that turns Smallfuck programs into lookup tables, illustrating that Smallfuck is, at best, a way to compress lookup tables, and SMETANA, being wordier, is not even that.
Martin Gasperowicz invents SADOL and implements it's interpreter with Adam Sawicki.
Gregor Richards creates ORK which is considered to be the first object-oriented esolang.
[edit] 2023
The TwoDucks programming language is created.
