A Programming Language To Express Programming Frustration – Hackaday

Programming can be a frustrating endeavor. Certainly we’ve all had moments, such as forgetting punctuation in C or messing up whitespace in Python. Even worse, an altogether familiar experience is making a single change to a program that should have resulted in a small improvement but instead breaks the program. Now, though, there’s a programming language that can put these frustrations directly into the code itself into a cathartic, frustration-relieving syntax. The language is called AHHH and it’s quite a scream.
While it may not look like it on the surface, the language is Turing complete and can be used just like any other programming language. The only difference is that there are only 16 commands in this language which are all variants of strings of four capital- or lower-case-H characters. The character “A” in the command “AHHH” starts the program, and from there virtually anything can be coded as a long, seemingly unending scream. The programming language is loosely related to COW which uses various “moos” to create programs instead of screams, and of course is also distantly related to brainfuck which was an esoteric programming language created in order to have the smallest possible compiler.
We can’t really recommend that beginner programmers start to learn this language instead of something more practical like Python, esoteric languages like these can teach us a lot about the way that computers work. This language, for example, lets you code in pixels instead of characters. Others are more for fun such as this language which turns your code into an ’80s rock ballad.
Thanks to [Kyle F] for the tip!
That is hilarious!
Perhaps someday it can be expanded upon by adding the letters R and G. Perhaps that version could be called “AHHHRRGH”.
I’m always missing functions in these esoteric languages. What about making function calls contain aaargh?
And then maybe something like “GRAAH” as return keyword.
Unfortunately my colleagues find it already intimidating if I send them bits of Perl, so I might not be able to use it for production.
GRAAH
Remember the good old times when FSF’s project C+= was just a joke a didn’t offend anyone?
This reminds me a little of, Brainfuck, although I’d say AHHH might be a little more incomprehensible, all be it with the benefit of having a slightly larger instruction set.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
Just a note, “all be it” is a common misspelling of “albeit”.
Just a note, “albeit” is a common slang term for “althagh it be that”, or as you young whippersnappers might understand it better “although it be that”.
There’s a variation of Brainfuck known as “Ook!” that is very close to AHHH in essence
And it’s a nice reference to Discworld too 🙂
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck#Ook!
Ook. Ook. Eek!
Shouldn’t say that in polite company
Always thought the comments in a programming language where designed for this, but this producesses more compact sourcecode. Double win
I’ve been wanting to make a language based on an interpretation of JavaScript called FLUFF, for FLUFF Looks Useful but it’s Full of FLUFF. Perhaps some day I’ll do it.
So a programmer using this would be called a fluffer?
…
I will show my self out xD
Take a knee instead. Or two. :-/
+1
My favourite in this –uh– space: whitespace [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_language)
Perl has a module called “Bleach” which lets you write the entire script in whitespace. So you write a script to do anything you wanted, and when pulled up in an editor all you see is “!#/whatever/perl; use Bleach” as the entirety of the program.
Nice pic, looks like something right out of one of those late 70s computer mags.
Does it also have super cow powers?
Is there a HHHA decompiler?
Because sometimes you need to know what HAHA does
Perhaps somebody ought to base an esoteric programming language on the joke that “The language all programmers know best is profanity.”
+0100100010
I have no mouth, and I must code.
If anyone wants more compact code and less compiler why not try APL instead? It is more useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge – Malbolge is the worst
IMO to be more realistic, each of the opcodes needs to be made of a collection of symbols – *#$! for increment-cell, etc. Programmers are generally more …. “inventive” than just a long drawn-out scream, so I think this would be a more accurate representation….
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