Talk:Language list

Redirect from Main Page

I don't think it is a good idea to redirect here from the Main Page. The main page should, IMHO, contain a brief description of the project and encourage people to participate. And it should link to the article explaining the concept of an esolang, and the language list

Rune 14:38, 26 May 2005 (GMT)

The idea was to make it possible to access the language list from every page. If I can figure out how to change the list of links on the left side, I'll do that instead. Graue 16:00, 26 May 2005 (GMT)

Yes, that would be better. I think it might be in the skins, but I'm not sure. Rune 17:06, 26 May 2005 (GMT)

I looked into it, and found some info here. There seems to be two ways to do it. Manually editing the LocalSettings.php (which we should avoid IMHO) or changing the text and url of the items already there. I suggest replacing Current events with the Language list. I tried to test it myself, but I was not allowed to edit the relevant pages.

The text of the Current Events link is the contents of this page: MediaWiki:Currentevents, and the url is the contents of this page: MediaWiki:Currentevents-url. So if they are replaced with Language list I think it would work. Rune 18:03, 26 May 2005 (GMT)

Category?

Might not this "article" be better off as a category? That is, with an "Esolangs" category marker at the bottom of each esolang article, this page could be automatically generated by MediaWiki. --Chris Pressey 21:27, 2 Jun 2005 (GMT)

It definately could. However, if we keep it as a normal page we can have a short description of each language, next to the link (like in the Wikipedia). I don't think that can be done with categories. And I think that is something we should do. Just the name of the language doesn't tell very much. --Rune 21:55, 2 Jun 2005 (GMT)

I think the list would get cluttered and inconsistent, just like it is on Wikipedia, if we did that. The best reason for the list to exist is so we can look at the red links and know what we have to fill in. Later we should add categories for languages (stack-based languages, two-dimensional languages, etc.) and those could all be subcategories of an "Esoteric programming language" category. --Graue 22:03, 2 Jun 2005 (GMT)

I just discovered at least one language (SMATINY) that was not on the list despite being in the Languages category. --Ørjan Johansen, 15 May 2006

Thanks for fixing it. You wouldn't happen to know more details about this language? I notice that the article lacks both the name of the Author and a link to a specification of the language. --Rune 00:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Author would be me, specification would be the Wiki page. :-) --Ihope127 01:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

OK. What year did you make this language (for categorization)? --Rune 10:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

2005, apparently. /me adds the category --Ihope127 01:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I think a lot of these languages in the list should be linked in the joke language list instead of here. Esoteric means only known to a smallot number of people of a group or interest. All of the languages fit this category, but not all of them are usable or practical. Hence, the joke language list. Basically lots of languages here should be be in the joke languages list. By:User: Areallycoolusername --(this comment by Areallycoolusername at 01:09, 28 December 2018‎ UTC; please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Please don't add URLs

Instead of adding URLs for new languages here, make a stub page with a one-line description and a link to that URL. I think that will help weed out some of the Wikipedia cruft that just doesn't belong here, like BANCStar, which is clearly not an esoteric programming language. --Graue 21:07, 4 Jun 2005 (GMT)

*W and []

There are currently two esolangs under 0-9 which do not start with a number. Do we need a "non alphanumberic" listing, are they so few there's no point in making another listing or should they be moved to S for Star W and B for Brackets? --BodyTag 09:02, 20 Sep 2005 (GMT)

I don't think they should be moved to W and B. A non-alphanumeric listing is probably the solution. Or extending 0-9 to include them. --Rune 13:13, 20 Sep 2005 (GMT)

Yeah, making a new category for non-alphanumeric sounds good to me. --User:Keymaker

Done. --Rune 21:42, 20 Sep 2005 (GMT)

In a related manner, should other characters when used because of their resemblance to letters be where the letters would be? For example, should l33t and L00P really be considered to be leet and loop, which they currently are, or should they not? And in that case where should they be? I really think about trivialities too much. It would be easier to sort this list ASCIIbetical, because it would at least stop me from asking stupid questions about the sorting :P --BodyTag 21:20, 3 Dec 2005 (GMT)

I think the way they are sorted now is fine. --Rune 19:07, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Another similar question would be this: If I made a programming language called ギピオヘ would I list it under non-alphanumeric, or G (as in GIPIOHE), or what? --Zzo38 17:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I would definately put it under "other". --Rune 19:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Enhanced language list

I'm working on an improvement of the Language List in my user space; the current version is here. This is a bit of esoteric programming in its own right; after reading a chance comment on Wikipedia that wiki markup could sometimes get like INTERCAL, I thought I'd try something really complicated. The list is implemented as a quadruple-transclusion and works by abusing wiki-markup and CSS. Eventually, I hope to have a better explanation on the page of what it means, and more visual niceties, such as corrections for very long language names and graphics rather than letters over the right (which don't mean anything very obvious at the moment). The lists are mostly based on categories and so some of the given details are inaccurate, and not all the languages are on the list (the ones missing are the ones I didn't feel like writing summaries for ;-)). ais523 16:04, 22 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Woah, that is some excellent work! It'd be great to have a such language list! Perhaps we could have something page "short language descriptions" or something, or just change our language list to that. Very nice. --Keymaker 21:51, 22 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Nice! But how to maintain something like this when people add new languages? The current User:ais523/LanguageDatabase does not look like something you would want to edit by hand. I suppose a robot would collect information (such as categories) from the article pages (did you already write one to make this?), and there would need to be a template for summaries. --Ørjan 22:25, 22 Jun 2006 (UTC)

Great work! This would be a very nice feature to have. As Ørjan, I am also a bit concerned how easy it is to maintain, but I'm sure a reasonable solution can ba found :) --Rune 16:14, 24 Jun 2006 (UTC)

I created it in a semi-automated manner (instead of writing a bot, I just looked through the categories by hand and entered them into a spreadsheet, which produced the appropriate code). The Language Database isn't actually as bad as it looks; it's basically a name and a description followed by many 'radio-button'-like truth values. The descriptions of what they do are at User:ais523/Language.

As for the maintainance problem, probably a bot or something like that would be required, unfortunately. One problem with transclusion in this MediaWiki version is that a transcluded page must be edited to update the changes, so the job isn't trivial.

Another problem with the current version is that some of the data on the right is probably incorrect; I used a 'default' line for uncategorized or partially categorized languages, which will probably be wrong in at least some details for many of the languages.

The last problem is the length of the produced HTML; all the data is there in every version (even the filtered onesone), just hidden through CSS, so there's a lot of redundant HTML if you View Source on the page. I'm not sure whether that would be a problem on slow connections or not.

In all, I think the best solution would be the one MediaWiki use for Special:Recentchanges; to keep the existing Language List as the 'default' that users navigate to, and to link to the 'enhanced' version, perhaps with a warning about up-to-dateness and connection speed. ais523 07:38, 26 Jun 2006 (UTC)

(())?

OK, I went through the language list and managed to make some kind of stub for all the missing links, except one: (()). I don't know if it is possible to search the web for non-alphanumerics, but my attempts so far have failed. Ihope127, since you added the language to the list, could you please tell what it is? --Ørjan 20:31, 27 Jul 2006 (UTC)

It seems to have evaporated. It was some language that I was going to post, but I never got around to doing to. --Ihope127 20:56, 27 Jul 2006 (UTC)

This page

I agree with Keymaker that something needs to be done about this page. (Well done, Keymaker, you beat me to removing the latest wave of vandalism by a few seconds.) Disabling edits by unregistered users is the usual technique (that Keymaker's done here), but I was thinking about trying an alternative; the spambots seem to be using edit-section links, so I was planning to disable section editing on this page for a while to see if it made a difference. What do people think of the various possibilities? --ais523 14:50, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

new esoteric language

Where I can to offer a new esoteric language? --Logic 12:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Create a page for it on this wiki, and link to it from Language list and/or your user page. --Zzo38 02:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Some cleanup

The last addition of a dead "Grits" link with absolutely no information drove me to clean up the list a bit again. I found some links and made stubs, but the following languages seem to be ungoogleable afaict and have no edits other than the one adding the dead link in the first place (I included a link to the relevant diff).

• Grits
• Surgery!
• UNITY
• VLL (Actually this might refer to a LEGO programming language - does it count as esoteric?)

Perhaps it would be worth adding to the language list a note that languages without a link leading to information about the language will be deleted? Seeing as how my cleanup found some information that nearly got lost, I am not so fond of outright deleting external links altogether, though. --Ørjan 19:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

New Esoteric language

Hello, I'm putting this here so it can possibly get some recognition and a page on this wiki(I don't know how).

Tomasz Grysztar, the creator of the awesome assembler called Flat Assembler(http://flatassembler.net/index.php) created an esoteric language back in August called Challenger. It is a pretty interesting language, and it could probably get more recognition on this site.

Link to its release: http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=10625

--Windwakr 23:47, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, I made a stub page. --Ørjan 20:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Works in Progress

Given that there is a separate page for Works in progress, should languages which are works in progress also be included in the language list while they are still in progress? --Chris Pressey 22:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Probably not, but note that Works in progress is supposed to be for collaborative projects only. --Ørjan 23:14, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

What's the accepted heuristic for telling whether a project is collaborative or not? Given that the Works in progress page has said "please keep your solo projects on your computer until they are ready" for the past five years, it seems reasonable to assume that any grossly unfinished, unattributed language posted to this wiki is intended as a collaborative project. --Chris Pressey 18:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Not really, it's not clear that that applies to languages not listed on that page. It's not like everyone would be expected to have read the Works in progress page in the first place. Of course I also have for a while had a sneaking suspicion that some people may have added links to Works in progress without noticing what it's for, but that's their problem. Hm, it suddenly seems obvious to me that the page should be renamed to include collaborative in the title... --Ørjan 01:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Alright, but surely if said grossly unfinished (e.g. has sections containing only the word "TODO"), unattributed language also lacks any references (or any other suggestion that it has an existence independent of this wiki) and is marked {{stub}} (which brings the text "Please help us by adding some more information" onto the page), then it is reasonable to assume the author is soliciting changes from others, making the project collaborative?

It's certainly possible to miss "please keep your solo projects on your computer", but it's much harder to miss "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." If you're not providing any further context for how some incomplete language description should be edited, I feel it's unreasonable to expect other people to not make additions and changes to it.

I think the problem is that there is no simple way to distinguish between article and language here. Some people design languages elsewhere, and the languages are mentioned here; other people use this site as their notebook or canvas for designing a language. I don't object to either approach, I'm just trying to feel out the expectations we have on how people use the wiki. --Chris Pressey 17:25, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, a language is owned and modified solely by its creator unless it is explicitly a collaborative project. The way I see it, the "edited mercilessly" text is referring solely to the phrasing of the article: e.g. the description of commands, formatting, and so on. I don't approve of people modifying others' unfinished designs, even if they're not meant to be put on the wiki; a move to userspace or deletion is, I think, more appropriate than modifying a woefully-incomplete language. —ehird 02:00, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I could discuss further how I feel about the concept of ownership in this setting, but that's not the point of this discussion. Since a majority of people in this conversation seem to feel that we should require articles to be explicitly identified as collaborative before being included in Works in progress, I'll take Perm off that list, and I'll propose adding wiki-level support for identifying works with a {{collaborative}} tag or similar. But I'd also like to know, ehird, if you have any opinion on the original question (whether unfinished designs belong in the language list), to help determine if it should stay there or not as well. --Chris Pressey 03:54, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

↵

↳ I agree that the Works in progress page seems to be intended for collaborative works; I suggest that it be moved to "Collaborative works in progress", and perhaps a "Solo works in progress" should exist (maybe the links must be to user subpages?) I don't think grossly incomplete languages should go on the language list, as they aren't really languages yet; however, almost-complete languages that are still being modified slightly and occasionally minorly reworked should have a place there. —ehird 04:42, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll take Perm off the Language list, since there seems to be consensus on that issue. --Chris Pressey 05:13, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: no more listing of brainfuck equivalents

I think brainfuck equivalents should no longer be listed.--AnotherTest (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

How to create a page?

How to create a page for your esoteric language? I created my own language, which has a non-standard syntax. Called "Nopurpose" Kamish (talk) 17:04, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Welcome to the esolang wiki! One way is to use the search box to search for the name of your language. If the article name is not taken, there will be a link on the result page to create it.

Another way is to create a link somewhere to the name (like on your user page or in the Language list). If you click that red link you can create the page. --Ørjan (talk) 02:06, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

thank you very much! Kamish (talk) 17:20, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

List Cleanup Request

I'm planning to clean up the list as follows:

• Sort the terms in character value with no case sensitivity
  • A B goes before AA (spaces will separate words)
• Use the search bar and revision history to add languages that were never added

Any ideas on improvements for this procedure? This will be done manually. Voltage2007 (talk) 10:34, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

How do I add an esolang?

I have one, just trying to figure out how to create the page for it

EvyLah (talk)

Type the language name into the search bar. There will be a message like Create the page "1fish" on this wiki!. --Hakerh400 (talk) 15:42, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Alphabetic order

How will spaces, symbols and uppercase letters affect alphabetic order, for example, what is the order of:

• ab
• aB
• a b
• a c
• a*

--None1 (talk) 04:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-serious language list

Since this list has grown huge, i created a Semi-serious language list to filter out the "good" esolangs.

What do you think about this? Also, please contribute! Iddi01 (talk) 10:21, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Sounds great, but I don't think an esolang needs to be Turing complete to be good. Some esolangs are not TC because they use limited memory, but will be TC if the memory limit is removed. Others have a not TC but still powerful computational class. --None1 (Nope.) 11:29, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

I think such a page would only be useful if a) we have strict and objectively definable criteria to be allowed on it, and b) we go through all the languages on the wiki to make sure that every language that should be there is. It could be useful then, though. One criterion that's worth considering is "the language has at least one external resource" (whether it's off-wiki documentation, an interpreter, or whatever); that would filter out most low-effort languages, and languages that are actually interesting tend to get interpreters, programs, or the like written for them. --ais523 19:56, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

b) The approach i was considering is that when you when you read a language page and found out that it's "good", you check if the criteria is met, and if so you add it to the list. If a lot of people are doing this, then the list will become complete sooner or later.

Anyway, i'm going to change the criteria a bit. Iddi01 (talk) 05:58, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

If you want more people to see the list you should put it in the main page. --None1 (Nope.) 14:33, 27 September 2024 (UTC)