What does HackerNews think of quine-relay?
An uroboros program with 100+ programming languages
> This is a Ruby program that generates Rust program that generates Scala program that generates ...(through 128 languages in total, including brainfuck!)... REXX program that generates the original Ruby code again.
It is so mysterious how it's even possible, and hilariously the explanation of how it was made exists in Japanese only. I think at this point it would be easier to learn Japanese than to try to understand this project.
Other things like a brainfuck interpreter in brainfuck are impressive but don't come nearly as close to black magic as quine-relay.
https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
(HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6048761)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13823704
https://research.swtch.com/zip
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12262470
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12264461
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12264461
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18342042
https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1573218394358386688
https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1425264439624978435
https://mobile.twitter.com/David3141593/status/1371974874856...
https://mobile.twitter.com/David3141593/status/1368957384471...
https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24824977
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4326164
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16317458
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040723
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8602122
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10719317
Not exactly what you asked for, but, some similar fun stuff.
The wiki/app is the html file itself. If you add / remove content, you get another html file that contains the wiki app and the added / modified content.
No need for complicated applications, compatible wherever a browser runs (All OS), always compatible cos html (the raw html is human readable). No proprietary format lock in.
For the strict meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
For mindblowing stuff:
Quine Relay - A Ruby Program that generates Rust program that generates Scala program that generates ...(through 128 languages in total)... REXX program that generates the original Ruby code again. https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
It goes through 128 programming languages to regen its starting point.
Does anyone know the core concept?
As a non Ruby programmer I still appreciate its culture whose community best seems to explore code as art. One of Ruby's contributors @mame (also a talented #1 IOCCC winner) does this a lot who's famous for quine-relay [1] but has lots of other interesting art code projects in their repos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)
Apparently people on Stack Exchange have been working together on a single polyglot program for four years and have gotten a single codebase up to validity in nearly 300 languages.
https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/102370/add-a-la...
Edit: also, Yusuke Endoh is a master at this art form
https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
and has even written a book about it
http://uguu.org/words/2015_10_01.html
which I would still love to have available in English!
Software can be art in itself. Consider quines [1]. (Programs that, when run, produce themselves) They serve no real world purpose, and I consider them beautiful. Kind of like the restrictive format of a haiku. (Edit: Or perhaps tesselations, e.g. Escher's work [3])
I particularly enjoy what this artist(?) has done with their 128 language uroborus quine. [2]
Edit 2: I expect the objection will be that this is not functional, or a "product", however the uroboros quine does have practical uses. E.g. as a system stress test. If it were marketed as a stress test, its artistic value would still be apparent to a programmer examining its structure.
[1] https://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm