Piet is a programming language, whose programs look like abstract art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_(programming_language)

by psawaya • 16 years ago

99 28 16 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Roridge5• 16 years ago

I am so tempted to waste half my day playing with this. One day this will replace 3D barcodes and people will get mobile phone apps from soda cans.

elblanco2• 16 years ago

That's actually not such a crazy idea.....that may be an idea with legs.

Roridge5• 16 years ago

I didn't think it was crazy. Although for complex applications Piet needs bigger and bigger images... but then most things start that way.

kaddar2• 16 years ago

The idea of those barcodes is to maximize the reliable, storable information, regardless of format. If you make the information bytecode for a programming language, people would be able to get mobile phone apps from soda cans without needing to program in an esoteric programming language.

Using something like piet doesn't maximize reliability (error correction) and thus isn't good for that domain.

Roridge5• 16 years ago

yet.

DrJokepu• 16 years ago

That will make barcodes a whole new medium to exploit software vulnerabilities - I can't wait to see the first barcode virus.

tomerico• 16 years ago

The collection of sample programs is fun to look at: http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet/samples.html

Deestan• 16 years ago

The program for calculating Pi is my favourite. "Naturally, a more accurate value can be obtained by using a bigger program." made my day.

dmoney• 16 years ago

There was an obfuscated C program that worked the same way: a circle of code used to get its own area and radius. I can't seem to find it though.

yread• 16 years ago

Haha I like this Hello world program http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet/hw6_big.png

davidw• 16 years ago

Quick! Something interesting. Let's mark it for deletion!

(Sadly, it looks like they've already made two attempts on this article)

elblanco2• 16 years ago

Well, it appears that downvote abuse seems to have somewhat abated after a rash of downvote hordes around the new years (goodness that was annoying)....now they just flag and delete everything in sight when it doesn't fall into their personal concept of "interesting".

l0stman• 16 years ago

I might be mistaken but I think davidw was referring to earlier attempts to delete the article on Wikipedia, not Hacker News.

j23tom• 16 years ago

where can get this stuff the author is smoking ? ;)

raganwald• 16 years ago

When I read a "witty reply" I reach for the mouse to give it a downvote. Or, if the mouse is too far away, I convince myself that it was actually insightful. --Hitch Medberg

allenp• 16 years ago

Although you're being funny - I have to say that when I see things like this programming language that are so outside the box for me, it really does feel like there is some drug induced transcendence going on. I love this stuff, it makes me think - what if we used color as meta information in C what would that look like? The program flow is 2d now instead of just down the screen, what about adding dimensions or layers like in Photoshop. So yeah, for me, mind blown, point taken.

eru• 16 years ago

You may be interested in colorForth, which is actually serious.

aquadoctorbob• 16 years ago

Check out Befunge ( http://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge ) and its n-dimensional siblings. It's a favorite of mine.

Roridge5• 16 years ago

When you have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics who spends his time writing loads of web comics, I'm pretty sure you can write as many fantastical programming languages as you like without having to have smoked anything :)

My favourite is "ZOMBIE - a language designed for evil necromancers."

apgwoz• 16 years ago

I like Shakespeare: http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/

sonnym• 16 years ago

Obligatory esolang wiki reference: http://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet

Groxx• 16 years ago

This is really cool. Lots of possibilities, and just imagine what the steganography crowd would think if they got ahold of it.

Piet is a programming language, whose programs look like abstract art.

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