Programming

Ruby’s creator, Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), released the first public version of the programming language in December 1995, making Ruby just shy of its 30th birthday. It spread across Japanese-language Usenet newsgroups, a popular way of exchanging conversation and media before the World Wide Web, and then reached broader communities throughout the late 1990s.

Have you ever tried programming with a language that uses musical notation? What about a language that never runs programs the same way? What about a language where you write code with photographs? All exist, among many others, in the world of esoteric programming languages, and Daniel Temkin has written a forthcoming book covering 44 of them, some of which exist and are usable to some interpretation of the word “usable.” The book, Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code, is out on 23 September, published by MIT Press.