Malbolge

Malbolge is an esoteric programming language designed by Ben Olmstead in 1998. It is intended to be nearly impossible to program in, and has become one of the best-known examples of obfuscated programming languages. The name derives from Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno.

Technical overview: Malbolge operates on a memory of 59049 cells, a power of 3, and uses a ternary-like representation. Programs are written as sequences of numerical instructions; the semantics are determined by a fixed instruction table that is itself transformed as the program runs. Each executed instruction may modify memory, the instruction pointer, and internal state. The address space and instruction encoding are intentionally confusing, and code is typically written or produced by automated tools rather than by hand.

Program development: Because the language's rules scramble themselves during execution, writing even simple programs requires long, highly obfuscated sequences. The canonical Hello, World! program is widely cited as a demonstration of the language's difficulty. Early examples and later references often show that many programs are generated by compilers or search algorithms rather than authored directly.

Implementation and influence: Several interpreters exist in multiple programming languages, and Malbolge is documented on esoteric programming language wikis. It is frequently cited in discussions of esolang design and used as a benchmark for language obfuscation and program generation.