By any measure, there is an enormous number of programming languages. Some lists contain hundreds, while the Historical Encyclopedia of Programming Languages lists just under 9,000. You’ve probably only used a handful, and you might not be too surprised to discover that many of the rest are obscure, archaic, and just plain bizarre.

Find out quite how strange programming can get, from languages full of brackets to those that interpret color or even code you cannot see at all!

### Lisp: Everything Is a List

Lisp is an old language, possibly the second-oldest still in use today. It first appeared in 1960. The language’s name stands for “list processing,” but a common alternative nickname, poking fun at its unique syntax, is “lots of irritating superfluous parentheses.” It’s easy to see how it gained this name.

Lisp is the last serious language on this list, included because of its unusual paradigm and its status as the original AI language.

### Prolog: Logic and Natural Language Programming

Prolog uses a declarative style, where programs describe the structure and logic of a task rather than the process of how to accomplish it. Prolog does the rest, taking these rules and producing programs that use them.

This approach enables a particular type of programming focused more on logic and natural language than control flow and algorithms.

A Prolog program consists of facts like:

“`prolog
child(john, sue).
“`

And rules like:

“`prolog
parent(Y, X) :- child(X, Y).
“`

These make up a knowledge base you can then interrogate with queries such as:

“`prolog
?- parent(sue, john).
“`

This should return `true` to indicate that, yes, Sue is the parent of John.

Prolog is particularly well-suited to solving logic puzzles like the Towers of Hanoi or the classic river crossing puzzle with a wolf, goat, and cabbage. It’s another language that can be difficult to get your head around; once you do, though, it’s easy to recognize its beauty and influence.

### Befunge: The Language with Two-Dimensional Source Code

Befunge is a classic example of an esoteric programming language—one that cares more about its artful abuse of language design than its practicality. Using Befunge is a challenge, requiring a combination of logical thought and creative interpretation. Ultimately, it introduces a light-hearted touch to the normally serious world of programming.

While many languages are line-oriented, and a rare few—like Python—also care about code indentation and column placement, Befunge takes this to the extreme. The code consists of individual characters laid out in a grid, for example:

“`
0″! dlroW , olleH”v
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