Piet

You are reading an older blog post. Please be aware that the information contained in it may be technologically outdated. This text may not necessarily reflect my current opinions or capabilities.

This is an English translation of a blog post that was originally published in German.

March 30th, 2010

If you have previously read about esoteric programming languages, you may already be familiar with Piet. In case you haven't: Piet is a programming language in which program flow is specified in a graphical format.

In a nutshell: The focus moves between continuous blobs of pixels of the same color, the “cursor” starts off pointed to the right but may be rotated, colors correspond to opcodes (arithmetic, stack manipulation, I/O) while the number of pixels in one continuous area denotes that same integer.

Now, “writing” Piet is not exceptionally difficult, but it's a fun little mind-bender. There are interpreters and even assemblers available, so you can actually run your artwork.

I couldn't resist. Here's my first Piet program:

My first Piet program

To spare you the hassle of actually running it: It simply prints my first name and then halts.

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