I wonder at what level you could enforce/how far you could take the idea of "don't allow invalid states to be represented" to a programming language, to prevent this kind of language debauchery.
C does seem to sit at the perfect intersection of language age and low-level access to allow this kind of competition, whereas something like Go seems far less suited for it. Javascript is routinely obfuscated pretty well for human readers. I'm not familiar enough with Rust to say, but I bet with what little I know of its syntax you could create some pretty ugly stuff?
Narew 3 minutes ago [-]
With macro rust can surely produce some creative stuff
AlotOfReading 9 minutes ago [-]
You can write programs of a similar spirit in most languages. C has a programming culture that's much more tolerant of it than say, Python though.
Zig could probably support a similar contest as it grows up.
anthk 3 hours ago [-]
On the subleq VM, it would run faster if they implemented Muxleq, but it woudn't win the IOCCC contest maybe. Altough in unobfuscated it's C it's just an extra short if clause with two more lines.
TL;DR: the one entry implemented a subleq machine. Google it - it’s a One Instruction Set Computer (OISC). This made me smile. But it also raised a question: when were OISC’s first conceived? Would Apollo and computers of that era have benefitted from this insight?
RicoElectrico 3 hours ago [-]
> Nixie tube is a tiny electrical tube with filaments in the shapes of all the digits stacked one on top of another, and it displays the desired digit by making just that filament glow
Lol, no. That's a Numitron (although they were 7 segment)
your article says it's a gas discharge vacuum tube, so no filament.
You seem to be confidently incorrect too.
lightedman 59 minutes ago [-]
Multiple types of gas discharge vacuum tubes use a filament of some sort for excitation, be it a coil or grid.
RicoElectrico 2 hours ago [-]
Filament implies it is resistively heated, per tube terminology. Nixie is essentially a neon lamp, specially shaped, whose cathode is cold.
adrian_b 2 hours ago [-]
You are of course right, but you should have pointed out that the text quoted by you was not 100% wrong, because the ten cathodes have indeed the forms of the ten digits and they are stacked one above the other.
The only wrong parts were that the cathodes are not filaments and the cathodes themselves do not glow.
The Nixie tubes are filled with neon at low pressure and the electric discharges through them produce the so-called negative light, i.e. where the luminescent gas is confined around the cathode. Therefore the negative light takes the shape of the cathode. The cathodes are not glowing, but they are surrounded by glowing neon gas.
In my opinion, negative light, which comes from an apparently empty space, looks somehow more beautiful than solid light emitters, like an incandescent filament or a fluorescent lamp (like VFD, i.e. vacuum fluorescent displays; display tubes with incandescent filaments or with fluorescent segments were alternatives to Nixie tubes, until all of them were replaced by cheaper LEDs and LCDs).
The neon tubes that were used in advertising for making letters or other shapes, use positive light instead of negative light, i.e. where the luminescent gas occupies most of the glass tube, away from the electrodes, so giving various shapes to the glass tube provides various shapes of the visible light, regardless of the shapes of the electrodes (unlike for negative light, where the shape of the cathode matters, while the shape of the glass tube is irrelevant).
drfuchs 1 hours ago [-]
Also, Nixie Tubes were absolutely not “tiny.” Typically, they were about the same size as a vacuum tube you’d find in the back of your radio or TV. They were universally used on electronic equipment; less so on consumer devices.
w33n1s 4 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 15:42:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
C does seem to sit at the perfect intersection of language age and low-level access to allow this kind of competition, whereas something like Go seems far less suited for it. Javascript is routinely obfuscated pretty well for human readers. I'm not familiar enough with Rust to say, but I bet with what little I know of its syntax you could create some pretty ugly stuff?
Zig could probably support a similar contest as it grows up.
On 32k roms for the GB emulator:
https://github.com/tbsp/Adjustris
Old build:
https://pdroms.de/?__df=24010f101611170c163a13544b55553a4d22...
Someone ping back the IOCCC creator, please.
Lol, no. That's a Numitron (although they were 7 segment)
https://ethw.org/Nixie_Tubes
The only wrong parts were that the cathodes are not filaments and the cathodes themselves do not glow.
The Nixie tubes are filled with neon at low pressure and the electric discharges through them produce the so-called negative light, i.e. where the luminescent gas is confined around the cathode. Therefore the negative light takes the shape of the cathode. The cathodes are not glowing, but they are surrounded by glowing neon gas.
In my opinion, negative light, which comes from an apparently empty space, looks somehow more beautiful than solid light emitters, like an incandescent filament or a fluorescent lamp (like VFD, i.e. vacuum fluorescent displays; display tubes with incandescent filaments or with fluorescent segments were alternatives to Nixie tubes, until all of them were replaced by cheaper LEDs and LCDs).
The neon tubes that were used in advertising for making letters or other shapes, use positive light instead of negative light, i.e. where the luminescent gas occupies most of the glass tube, away from the electrodes, so giving various shapes to the glass tube provides various shapes of the visible light, regardless of the shapes of the electrodes (unlike for negative light, where the shape of the cathode matters, while the shape of the glass tube is irrelevant).