Introducing BF: The Great, the Glorious, and the Completely Silly

In real life, I’m not a mathematician; I’m a computer scientist. I’m still a math geek, mind you, but what I really do is very much in the realm of applied math, working on building systems to help people build programs.

One of my pathological obsessions is programming languages. Since I first got exposed to TRS-80 Model 1 BASIC back in middle school, I’ve been absolutely nuts about programming languages. Last time I counted, I’d learned about 150 different languages, and I’ve picked up more since then. I’ve written programs in most of them. Like I said, I’m nuts.

This is a roundabout way of explaining where the subject of this chapter came from. There’s a remarkably simple ...

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