I recently blogged about Whitespace, being a language that was written primarily to be as obscure as possible. Well, Intercal is one of the old-timers in this category. It was conceived all the way back in 1972.

What I enjoyed about this language is that I don’t think there is a single sentence on their website, nor in their manual, which is not making some sort of joke. these are a bunch of guys who don’t take themselves seriously at all. For example, according to the manual, the full name of the compiler is “Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym”, which is, for obvious reasons, abbreviated “INTERCAL”.

I have got to say that the code for something written in Intercal is not quite as incomprehensible as some other languages, but it certainly has got a completely different sense to any other language you may find. To give an example, to end program execution, the code is PLEASE GIVE UP. That should be some indication of the language. Not to mention, that it can output numbers natively in roman numerals.

Go on, I know you want to go and check it out….just heed the warning on the main page – Abandon All Sanity, Ye Who enter Here.

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