Turning tarpit

A turning tarpit is a form of Turing tarpit in which there is a sequence of commands, modeled as a rotating wheel. In a turning tarpit, language commands do not directly manipulate data, but instead affect the command wheel(s), by changing their rotation or executing the current command.

Overview of the Genre

The earliest example of a turning tarpit in the world of esoteric programming languages is probably reMorse (1998). Whirl (2004) embraces the technique most explicitly, styling itself as "dizzy programming". Fortuna (2005 or earlier) is probably the first turning tarpit to use the image of a wheel. Wunnel (2011) applies the turning tarpit technique to the problem of designing a 1L, and expands on the idea by using a two-dimensional torus of instructions instead of a one-dimensional wheel. Braincrash (2011) is a brainfuck equivalent. Jolverine (2012) is a conscious attempt to expand the turning tarpit genre by introducing a new feature: modifying the order of instructions on the wheel during execution. Advance The Wheel! (2022) expands the genre in a different way, by having control flow commands affect the wheel position rather than the instruction pointer.

See also

• All Turning tarpits on this wiki
• Laughing my  off, turning but not tarpit.