There's avant garde art; is there avant garde code?

5 pointsby tjchear6 tahun yang lalu6 comments

I may be seeking parallels where none exists; but if we go by avant garde's definition, code that is new, experimental, and/or unusual, functionally, or aesthetically (yes, I think good code can look aesthetically pleasing) should fit the description.

Thinking more about it, hand optimized code that looks unusual also fits this definition perfectly.

Any good examples of avant garde code you can share?

3 comments

mac3n6 tahun yang lalu

perhaps not what you're looking for, but one of my all-time favorites

https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q2/vangog.html

tjchear6 tahun yang lalu

Haha not quite, but I chuckled nevertheless. Thanks for showing this to me!

phaus6 tahun yang lalu

TempleOS's HolyC might qualify.

IMO TempleOS is potentially the greatest work of outsider art in the history of the world.

sgillen6 tahun yang lalu

Not sure why you are being downvoted, the whole of Temple OS is an impressive technical achievement and I might call it art.

0xfffafaCrash6 tahun yang lalu

Do esoteric programming languages count?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_languag...

There’s also a fairly huge subculture of abusing things such as Turing completeness (e.g. in CSS) to make tools and languages do things that they were definitely not designed to do. This isn’t just for utilitarian hacking, but also for completely aesthetic reasons (and maybe also for street cred and recognition for one’s mastery of obscure capabilities).

Quines snd especially radiation-hardened quines are basically just art.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)

So are things like bogosort: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogosort

tjchear6 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, esoteric languages certainly count! They go against well-established mainstream language concepts and elements.

This subculture you're talking about, do they exist as a community somewhere?

I knew about Quines, but I've never heard of radiation-hardened quines! That's really fascinating. Conceptually it does mimic radiation-hardened self-reproducing organisms.