Esoteric programming languages are programming languages which are designed as a proof of concept, or as jokes, and not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming. Consequently, usability is rarely a high priority for such languages. The usual aim is to remove or replace conventional language features while still maintaining a language that is Turing-complete.
The earliest esoteric language was Intercal, designed in 1972 with the stated aim of being as fundamentally unlike any existing language as possible. Other noteworthy esoteric languages are (for a more complete list, see List of esoteric programming languages):
- Brainfuck, a Turing tarpit consisting of only eight instructions
- Unlambda, an even more minimal language based on the functional programming paradigm
- Befunge, in which programs are arranged on a two-dimensional grid
- Malbolge, designed to be the hardest programming language ever invented.
- Whitespace, a programming language where only whitespace (space, tab, newline) matters.
- INTERCAL, a programming language designed to have as little as possible in common with any other programming language
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