Editing Esoteric programming language (section)

=== Difficulty to read and write ===
Many esoteric programming languages are designed to produce code that is deeply [[Obfuscation (software)|obfuscated]], making it difficult to read and to write.<ref name=":2">{{cite conference |last1=Mateas |first1=M. |last2=Montfort |first2=N. |title=A Box, Darkly: Obfuscation, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics. |conference=Digital Arts and Culture: Digital Experience: Design, Aesthetics, Practice (DAC 2005) |location=Copenhagen, Denmark |date=2005 |url=https://nickm.com/cis/a_box_darkly.pdf}}</ref> The purpose of this may be to provide an interesting puzzle or challenge for program writers: [[Malbolge]] for instance was explicitly designed to be challenging, and so it has features like [[self-modifying code]] and highly counterintuitive operations.<ref name=":2" /> On the other hand, some esoteric languages become difficult to write due to their other design choices. [[Brainfuck]] is committed to the idea of a minimalist instruction set, so even though its instructions are straightforward in principle, the code that arises is difficult for a human to read. [[INTERCAL]]'s difficulty arises as a result of the choice to avoid operations used in any other programming language, which stems from its origin as a parody of other languages.<ref name=":2" />