User talk:Aadenboy/Blog draft

thoughts on this

• Mainstream programming languages want to make the process of computation as easy as possible, but a good esolang in my opinion will typically hinge on hindering or translating computation in some way.

there's a healthy distinction to make here between 'difficult' and 'challenging'. mainstream languages aim to not be difficult, which typically also means not being challenging. individual esolangs like Malbolge might aim to be difficult in this way, but in general esolangs are meant to be challenging, as in it challenges the way you think about programming and how it works. this is a distinction we see get misunderstood a lot in popular conversations about difficulty and whatnot, so we think it's worth mentioning here

• LOLCODE without its memecat syntax is really not that different from any of the mainstream languages, but brainfuck can't be translated like that ... Trying to compute anything in brainfuck requires you treat it as its own model of computation and interpret problems through this lens; not that you can't rebuild higher primitives like arrays and such, but you really need to understand the fundamentals of how brainfuck's computation actually works.

yes this is a great way to illustrate what 'challenge' actually is. LOLCODE "challenges" the standards of programming languages very weakly by saying "ohh what if all your code looked like memes haha!!!", but brainfuck does actually deeply attack lots of the core assumptions typical programmers have about programming; how fundamental things like addition and multiplication work, how you even build abstractions from such a seemingly limited system, what abstractions even are to begin with, etc.

• From that, we can degrade further, with Turing tarpits making a really good example.

perhaps turing tarpits could be defined simply as the 'highest difficulty settings' of challenge you can get from esolanging

we have nothing specific to say about the languages you listed (other than the comment on Thue (it's turing complete cuz its a direct implementation of wikipedia:semi-Thue systems, which are tc)), but we have to say something in us swells with joy knowing this was all inspired by the conversations we had on what esolangs actually are. thank yo--MarkFan8901 (talk | contribs) 02:36, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

!! thank you for the insight!! good to know I was getting it right! the conversation really helped enlighten me to why esolangs are so interesting, figured it should be passed forward —aadenboy (talk|contribs) 02:39, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

hehe 'enlightened' is a really funny way to put it, but yea glad we were able to do that for you --MarkFan8901 (talk | contribs) 02:40, 4 October 2026 (UTC)