Strange Code

7THE ABCS OF ABCS

ABC (https://esolangs.org/wiki/ABC) was created by a programmer known as “Orange,” an esolang fan with several entries in the esolangs wiki. Some are jokes, others more serious, and then there’s ABC. I selected ABC because of its simplicity. Think of it as a starting point: something that is, but begs to be more. This chapter takes ABC from its unadorned description to a vanilla Python implementation, ultimately evolving it into something more via extensions to the language. This will be a warm-up for the esolangs that follow.

Specifically, we’ll present and implement ABC as originally described. Then, we’ll morph ABC into the ...