Cliffle's Esoterica

(Mwa ha ha.)

This page serves three purposes:

To induct hapless passersby into the ways of esoteric thought;
To provide links to esoteric topics in computer science and beyond;
To provide more specific information about evil...um, esoteric languages and models devised by Cliff Biffle.

This page can be thought of as dynamic, because it sounds better than "continually under construction."

Esoterica defined, very roughly.

Something which is esoteric can be roughly defined as something familiar only to a small circle of initiates. In this case, that circle consists of people I affectionately call "nerds." (Though some will probably react violently to that title.)
Thus, esoterica in this context is the collection of rather unique information I'm accreting, which is primarily of interest to those who enjoy playing with higher-dimensional spaces, thinking of systematic ways to mess with other people, or to those who have ever used the phrase "Turing tarpit."

Languages

This section contains computer programming languages (or, more generally, computer instruction systems) I've devised. Many are evil.

Beatnik

Beatnik is a very simple language, and is (to my knowledge) the only programming language with a reference guide available through Toys'R'Us.
More info is available on the Beatnik page.

4DL

In my quest to twist as many brains as possible into hypertoroids, I've created 4DL, the world's first four-dimensional programming language, where programs are represented by hypercubes. If this makes any sense, or even if it doesn't, check out the 4DL page.

HQ9+

HQ9+ was my first esoteric language, created a day or so after learning that such languages existed. It resulted from extensive analysis of the programming examples I could find on the web. For the longer story and examples of HQ9+, see the web page.