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| Paradigm | Esoteric, imperative, structured |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Urban Müller |
| First appeared | September 1993 |
| Typing discipline | Typeless |
| Filename extensions | .b, .bf |
| Influenced by | |
| P′′, FALSE | |
| Influenced | |
| Malbolge | |
Brainfuck is an esoteric programming language created in 1993 by Swiss physics student Urban Müller.[1] Designed to be extremely minimalistic, the language consists of only eight simple commands, a data pointer and an instruction pointer.[2]
Brainfuck is an example of a so-called Turing tarpit: it can be used to write any program, but it is not practical to do so, because it provides so little abstraction that the programs get very long or complicated. While Brainfuck is fully Turing complete, it is not intended for practical use, but to challenge and amuse programmers.[3][4] Brainfuck requires one to break commands into microscopic steps.
The language takes its name from the slang term brainfuck, which refers to things so complicated or unusual that they exceed the limits of one's understanding, as it was not meant or made for designing actual software but to challenge the boundaries of computer programming.
Because the language's name contains profanity, many substitutes are used, such as brainfsck, branflakes, brainoof, brainfrick, BrainF, and BF.[5]
- ^ Easter, Brandee (2020-04-02). "Fully Human, Fully Machine: Rhetorics of Digital Disembodiment in Programming". Rhetoric Review. 39 (2): 202–215. doi:10.1080/07350198.2020.1727096. ISSN 0735-0198. S2CID 219665562.
- ^ Temkin, Daniel (2017-09-01). "Language without code: intentionally unusable, uncomputable, or conceptual programming languages". Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. 9 (3): 83–91. doi:10.7559/citarj.v9i3.432. ISSN 2183-0088. Archived from the original on 2024-07-09. Retrieved 2024-02-11.
- ^ Haupt, Michael. "Implementing Brainfuck in COLA."
- ^ Cox, Geoff, and Alex McLean. "Not Just for Fun." Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. 157-173.
- ^ "brainfuck - Esolang". esolangs.org. Archived from the original on 2018-10-23. Retrieved 2024-02-07.