You've probably heard of code golf,

right? Well, did you know that there's

actually a world championship in code

golf called the International Obfuscated

C code contest. Now, I've seen some

photos and I'm sure you've seen some of

these float around over the years on

social media, but I did not realize just

how amazing these programs actually are

and the fact that this could produce

anything at all, let alone an amazing

program. So, today we are going to be

doing a tier list. Yes, you heard me

correct. A tier list on the most

beautiful ASCII art along with

functional program you have ever seen

and honestly, there was one of them that

when I played it, I stood up and started

clapping. I

By myself, I clapped at the screen.

These are going to be some of the most

mind-blowing things you're ever going to

see. All right, so first up is this

lovely one. Now, some of you probably

can take a guess as to what it does.

Yes, every single ASCII art is also a

bit of a clue as to what it does. Look

at that.

Look at how amazing that is.

But wait for it. Just wait for it.

Doctor Who. That's right, this lovely

piece of code right there actually

recreates the original intro screen for

Doctor Who. Now, here's the hard part

about all this is that every one of

these programs are amazing and it's hard

not to just give them all the highest

tier possible, but I think in the spirit

of fair competition, I'm going to put

this one under the S category. It's

pretty good, okay? But there's still

several that are even more mind-blowing.

All right, next up is this beauty. Look

at it. What could it be? What could this

one be about? It prints the current moon

cycle. That's right, today's moon cycle

is a waning crescent and what you see

right there is in fact a waning

crescent. To me, the thing that's just

so mind-blowing about this is there's

like

there's like no code here, dog. How does

this even work? As cool as it is though,

I I only going to rate this one as a B.

Yes, I know your mind's probably blown

right now, but that's Hey, I'm calling

it. I think it's only a B. It's awesome,

but it's not it

it's not as cool, I guess, as it could

be, even though there's so few

characters. I know, I can already feel

it right now. I can already feel people

getting on the keyboard making comments,

"You son of a [ __ ] that thing is the

coolest thing ever." Don't worry, it

gets so

much better. Before we continue,

thank you to the sponsors.

>> Dad,

could you teach me how to write code

today?

>> Does it look like I have time for that,

son? My database is down again. [music]

>> Um,

maybe tomorrow.

>> [music]

>> Not again.

Go long, son.

Teach, got to go fast.

>> Hey, Teach, how do you have time to play

with your kid? Isn't your database

always down? [music]

>> What do you mean? I chose PlanetScale,

the database for the consumer who wants

their downtime to be with their kid.

>> Nice catch, son.

>> Thanks for choosing PlanetScale. You're

the best dad ever.

>> No studies [music] have confirmed

PlanetScale makes you a better father,

but it is a really good database.

>> Hey, welcome back. Okay, so, we got the

lightning bolt next. Yes, the lightning

bolt. This one

I mean, it

I love the ASCII art, okay? The ASCII

art in this one is incredible. But, what

it does is it produces a nice little

lightning strike on your screen. Hey,

that's kind of cool, right? And they're

random each time. Look at that. Hey,

little just little lightning strike,

huh? For me, this one it's going to have

to be a D. I know, we're in D category

for a moment, okay? I love the ASCII

art, it just didn't it just didn't

deliver for me. Next up, what looks to

be a stamp. Now, this one was the first

one that truly

blew my mind. I can already tell you,

even before you see it, oh baby, we're

going up, okay? We're going all the way

up to S+ tier. I'm putting it in because

when you see what happens here, oh my

goodness. What it does is you press a

button

and it spins a top. It reads the top

shape from a file. You can provide any

top. You can see right here how many

revolutions per minute going on. It's

going to fly up here. It's going super

fast. It's going at a thousand. It

simulates a top. You can design your own

shape and it runs. Now, for me this is

just I don't know. I thought this one

was just so dang impressive because I

can't even believe this actually works.

I can't even believe you could build a

simulation in that few characters, let

alone a simulation that I can just

design whatever shape I want and it just

works. And there we go. It's crashing.

Look at it go. Look at that. It looks so

good. It's 3D ASCII. Now you can see why

this deserves the S+ category. I mean

this thing has to be one of the coolest

programs I have ever seen. And I'm still

blown away that like this is the code.

This is it. That's

That's all it That's all it takes. Next

up is

I guess a bunch of signs, the addition,

subtraction, multiplication, and

division sign. All right, so this this

program, what it does is you give it

what it's allowed to use, a zero, and

then what numbers it has to calculate.

So when I press enter, it actually

figures out, okay, only using seven, 77,

and 77, seven, 777, I will make that

number by doing this. Hey, that's pretty

neat. It just figures out how to do

things like that. I'm I'm impressed by

that. I have no idea how the math works,

let alone how you would fit it just in

that that many lines of code. Like how

How did it How did he do it? It blows my

mind. But at the end of the day, I kind

of put this one into the moon category,

okay? The B category because it is very

technically impressive. It's just not as

much of a visual spectacle. It doesn't

capture me like the other ones. Yes, I'm

going to be a little bit biased on some

visual spectacles, okay? All right, I

love this one. This one is from right to

left or at least it gives the appearance

of being a right to left program. All

right, so when I run this one, it's

actually a game. You can use WASD. You

can dodge all these things. Look at it.

Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. Look

at it. This is not a game and keyboard,

okay? As you can see, you can also

shoot. Look at us go. Look at that go.

Look at that go. Look at that. I'm

shooting.

I'm not dying. I'm not going to die. I'm

not going to die just by sitting in one

place and shooting. Okay, I died. So,

the program itself, that was I can't

like I I'm pretty sure that there's at

least 15% of my audience that couldn't

write that program by hand, let alone

write a program that looks like it's

right to left, but I will say that the

visual spectacle of the code doesn't

feel as welling as the other one. So,

that kind of goes against it, but the

game the game is so dang good. I got to

do it. I got to A-tier this one, okay? I

got to A-tier this one. All right, so

the next one is this. Look at Look at

all of this. So So much obfuscation

inside of the middle of it, it says

relax. Now, remember, all the art,

of course, is some sort of indicator

typically what you're going to see. This

program is a relaxation sound generator.

May take 5 to 10 seconds to generate.

All right, so where do we put relax? I

mean, obviously the ASCII art is pretty

cool. I love that the ASCII art is

directly tied into what it produces,

which is this really relaxing sound. And

then the sound waves, like the waters,

the water actually sounds really good.

Like it sounds really really good, and

it generates it. So, I just I I feel

like this has to be an S-tier item,

right? If you got the full package here,

you got the art tied in with the the

result, and it's just pretty dang high

quality. This is This is feels This

feels like S tier to me. All right, so

this next one's a bit harder to explain.

You can see a dy/dx right here, so we

got a little bit of

difference with respect difference of Y

with respect X. Is that how you read

these? It's been so long. Anyways,

either way

you can tell that there's going to be

some sort of derivative property to this

one. Now, this one needs a little bit

more explaining because what it does

it's a bit mind-blowing. So, this

program is a self-modifying Quine chain

that hides a diff tool inside of a patch

tool. So, you actually use the patch

tool to patch itself 25 times. And at

the end of patching yourself 25 times,

you'll actually get a diff tool at the

end. And what makes this program so cool

is that it it says right here Larry

Wall. It's a tribute to Larry Wall,

creator of the patch command and Pearl

programming language and the winner

of the International Obfuscation C

Challenge. As you can see, he actually

did win right here, which is a Dvorak

keyboard emulator. You already know that

I'm pretty impressed by that one. You

can even go check out his code right

here. Now, this is actually just Larry

Wall writing some pretty standard Larry

Wall code. And this was

2 years before Pearl was invented. The

man was writing Pearl before Pearl

existed. It reminds me of a brief,

incomplete, and mostly inaccurate a

history of programming languages. Larry

Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's

forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking,

Larry Wall decides that the string of

characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't

random but an example program in a

programming language that God wants his

prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Pearl is

born. Since there's not really much of

an output for it and it's kind of like a

super cool tribute one, I figured I'd

put this one in this I put it you know

in a C category. Like it's a technically

impressive feat. I There's There's no

universe exists that I could program

that one, but I don't feel like it's

again visually as impressive. The ASCII

does match the program, which does rate

it higher, but it just doesn't uh

it doesn't do it for me, okay? I

I know. This is a Hey, tier lists are

biased, okay? Back off me. So, this one

we have ourselves a little bit of a

skull, okay? I wonder what's going to

happen with this one. It's actually a

video game. Cycle through target choices

before firing. Kill lowest matching

invader. All right, here we go. So, I

got Okay, I got to get a brief.

Fire. Wait, fire. There we go. Oh, yeah.

Yes.

Oh, no.

Uh-uh.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

Yes. Yes.

Oh, no.

Oh, crap. All right. I did pretty good,

okay? I I got some points.

But, hey, that's a pretty cool little

game. Hey, that's a pretty cool little

game. I like the ASCII art. Fun little

game. Pretty neat, but overall again,

not a huge visual spectacle. I'm going

to put I'm putting in the D category,

okay? I'm doing it again. I'm doing it

again. The ASCII art does match the

experience, but there's not much to the

experience. It doesn't feel as

technically impressive as some of the

other ones. I bet you at this point,

midway through here,

that there's a lot of people right now

that are losing their mind, okay? Hey,

calm down Hey, this Hey, this is my tier

list, okay? Go ahead. Tell me Tell me

how you feel. You won't? All right, so

this next one Look at this. Look at

that. It looks kind of like a tree or a

smoke stack. It's a little bonsai tree

simulator. Look at that guy go.

It's kind of peaceful, you know? It's

like this This would actually make an

amazing little

you know, text screen saver. And

honestly, it ends a little soon for me.

You know, I I

I understand how it feels. I wish it

would last longer though, you know? Me

and you bonsai tree. Me and you little

bonsai tree. You know what? We're done.

We're done here. We're done. We're

moving on. All right, so I love the

ASCII art. I love that it plays and

builds a little tree. It's a beautiful

running program. Beautiful ASCII Oh my

gosh. For me this just had that really

impressive feel to it. I just wish it

would have lasted a little bit longer,

you know? Take your time a little bit.

So I'm going to put it in the A

category. Even though I loved it, it

just didn't do it for me. I know there's

a lot of you out there, anime waifus.

Okay, this one's probably hitting hard

for you, but this one is particularly

impressive. This one is one of the few

ones that like my mind

can't even comprehend

how they made this. So this is what they

refer to as a polyglot piece of code.

Now you probably heard the term polyglot

before describing somebody who has like

say many doctorates in a certain in

different you know, fields or someone

who can program really well in many

different languages. Typically you know,

like a a poly language, a polyglot

language specialist, right? You get the

idea. But this, the code itself is a

polyglot. And what does that mean? Well,

here's the thing. So how this program

works is you take some input and you

pipe it into the program. When you do

that, it can cut out a little one of the

lines. So you say, "Hey, cut out line

50." Right? So this is kind of like akin

to the old text editors. But here's the

thing about the program. If you take the

program itself and you cut out the first

line,

the program goes from a cut tool

to head. If you're not familiar with

head, head displays the first few lines

of any like of an input stream or a

file. If you cut the last line, it

becomes tail. It then displays the last

few characters. Now here's where it gets

mind

just boggling, okay? You can run the

program with Ruby. That's right, you

don't even have to make it with C

anymore. You can just raw dog it with

Ruby. And apparently, if you raw dog it

with Ruby, guess what you get? You get

like the complement of head and tail.

Also, if that doesn't bother you enough,

you can also run the program with Pearl.

In other words, this program is a

collection of line-based cutting tools.

So, for an example, this program is

going to cut line two of a sequence of

five. When I press enter, you can see 1

3 4 5.

You can also cut the other direction. 1

2 3 4's missing 5. You can then run the

program as Ruby and bada bing bada boom,

look at this. You now have a Ruby

program. Hey, Ruby program, hey, take

the first two. Now, remember, Ruby

program inverts it. So, it's not take

the first two, it's skip the first two.

And then of course, you can go the other

direction. Skip the last two. The layout

of this code is based on Ubel from this

book. It's called Beyond the Journey's

End. It's for her ability to cut just

about everything. That is who this

lovely lady is. For me, I've never For

me, I've never even thought of the fact

that you could write a program that

could run in three separate languages.

For me, that the technical feat of this

one is so impressive that I just have to

I cuz I'm I'm a rookie in this category,

okay? I don't know a lot about

obfuscation, but the fact that you could

do this and the program could look that

beautiful and the output could be that

technically amazing, it's just like all

of it blows my mind. This one was not a

visual spectacle, which goes against

everything I've said thus far, but it's

it's so technically mind-blowing. It has

to be here cuz I didn't even know this

was possible. The next one should just

kind of look at this. It should just

fill your little heart with joy. Is that

a Game Boy?

It is. Look, it even has like the little

speakers down here. Such attention to

detail. This one is absolutely

incredible. So, this Game Boy, I bet you

can kind of guess what it does. Okay, it

requires a lot of rows, so you can kind

of barely read this, but as you can see,

we have a few different options right

here. So, we have Game Boy controls.

Look at this, 2048.

Let's go.

I don't even know what the controls are.

Let's Let's rock and roll. Okay, 2048.

Okay. Okay.

Uh down.

Over.

This is actually so good.

This is so

Look at this. Would you

Would you Would you just Would you look

at it? Okay. Are you Are you looking at

this?

Are you actually seeing what I am seeing

right now? I don't think you are. So,

this is a Tetris-optimized

terminal Game Boy emulator. That's

right. A Game Boy emulator fitting in

this much code.

This thing is just

It's just the best. Hands down. Like,

this is so incre How do people even

create this? Crazier part is, how do you

even debug this? Like, what is What's

the strategy? There must exist some sort

of program in which can make C look

absolutely disgusting, but this is just

I can't I can't even believe it. So, it

should be no surprise that this one's

going into the S+ category, okay?

This is S+ for days. This is the S++.

Sorry, my bad. I I misspoke. I misspoke.

Very impressed. Hey, Siri. I was Sorry,

I was not aware of your game. All right,

next one up is this beautiful little

calculator. Look at it.

Geez, I wonder

I wonder what it's going to do. All

right, so as you can see right here, if

you run program two, it prints out the

the number two. If you do 2 + 2 - 1, you

would of course get three.

8 trillion divided by 14 million and

seven plus 156

Boom. Yes, all of that somehow in here.

It's in It's It's right there. Don't you

see the trillion?

What? How does it even work? How does it

understand the number? That is what

blows my mind. I can't even I can't even

consider reality right now. I feel like

I'm feel like I'm being lied to actively

as we speak. This can't This can't be

the same code, right? And so for me this

one as someone who once had to build a

calculator on stream, that is very it's

a very difficult one and there's so many

little edge cases. And so it was very

impressive. The ASCII art very

beautiful, the output very cool. I'm I'm

going to give it a B, okay?

It was awesome. Super impressed. But we

we can all agree that's that's not an S

plus material, okay? All right, bagel

modulo N. Look at all that. I don't know

what's going on in here, but there's a

there's there appears to be a lot of

function calls, macros being executed.

Modulo N. I don't even like I can't even

make a guess as to what this program

does based on the ASCII art. It seems

very confusing. All right, so this

program you echo in a series of moves

into the program and when you hit enter,

it plays those moves in order as a game

of tic-tac-toe and tells you who wins.

That's right.

It plays tic-tac-toe. This code right

here. That code.

Who are these people, okay? I'm I don't

think Chat GPT would have any idea what

this code does.

Hey, you can you can ignore that. Don't

don't don't look at that.

All right, so I pasted the code in.

Turned on pro thinking. That's right.

This is some pretty serious model

computation going on. Now obviously the

only problem that I can see is that

since this is on a public GitHub

repository, there might be some sort of

identification that it could pull

somewhere deep inside of its weights and

be like, "Um this is actually one of the

many winners of the international

obfuscated C challenge." Look at this.

Chat GPT on pro thinking was actually

able to see this the visible behaviors

of two-player Tic-Tac-Toe game. It

clears the terminal and draws a 3x3

board, prompts for squares 1 through 9,

and detects a win. Chad GPT,

I'm impre- I A I'm impressed. All right,

so I you know, I

I'm going to rate this one low, okay?

For me, it it didn't feel as cool as the

other ones, okay? I'm putting it like I

feel like I actually have to explain it

to everybody. The fact is is that

when you look at what it did

comparatively to everything else, it

just doesn't feel

as mystical, if you will. And so, I got

hey, therefore, I got to give it the D,

okay? I'm Boys, I'm giving it the D. All

right, so now we're down to the last

six, seven, the last seven. These

There's some pretty cool ones in this

one, okay? The These ones start getting

pretty mind-blowing. All right, first up

is this right here, the vortex. Look at

that vortex. Look at how beautiful it

looks. It's all commented out, so kind

of has this like cool little star shape

into it. It actually looks like a

vortex, and then it spells a vortex

right here. I'm not going to lie to you.

It's pretty neat, okay? Hey, it's pretty

neat, but it's what it does

that is You just kind of have to see it

yourself. This is the input right here,

the International Obfuscated C Code

Challenge going on right here. And as

you can see, we're going to pipe that

in, and then we're going to pipe it on.

This does some encoding onto it. Watch

the encoding.

Now,

you uncode.

Tell me that is not awesome. Tell me

that is not incredible. Look at this.

This is the source code right here. This

is the source code that we are looking

at right now, and when you run it, look

at that.

It actually obfuscates that top part,

and then de-obfuscates it, and goes back

and forth. Look that you can actually go

both directions. This program is a

spectacle, people. I loved it. Like I

understand that this one may not be the

most impressive functionality ever, but

for me it's just the spectacle of the

ASCII art, the spectacle of the output.

It is a wow to the eyeballs. Oh my

goodness gracious, I'm absolutely

putting that in S plus right now, okay?

For me, that was the one, all right?

That was the one that did it. That

tickled me right where I needed to be

tickled, okay? Next up, Z3. Now I I this

one I didn't I didn't really get. Like I

don't really understand the ASCII art. I

bet you there's somebody that's old

enough that they could figure out what

this means. This is a callback, it turns

out, to a bit older of a game. So for

me, this did not land. So when you run

the program first, you get to admire the

source code of it. Very beautiful. But

when you press it again, you're actually

presented a text-based game. That's

right. This thing runs a bunch of

different famous, well-known text-based

games, including Mini Zork, Advent

Curses, Fantasy Dimension. And when you

play them, let's just uh start off with

number zero. There we go. So you can do

quit, save, or restore, which means you

can continue to play, and it loads in

these files. It reads them from disk,

which have these just large branching

narrative games, such as this. West of

House. You are standing in an open field

west of a white house with a boarded

front door. You could circle the house

to the north or the south. There's a

small mailbox here. North.

North of the house. You are facing the

north side of the white house. There's

no door here, and all the windows are

boarded up. A narrow path winds north

through the trees.

As you can see, this is just a

text-based adventure, so you could go

on. Whatever the adventure is that has

been in put into this game, very

impressive. So this one is super cool.

Obviously, the games themselves are is

not stored in the source code, just the

engine that runs it. And so

it is pretty neat. I liked it. Uh But

for me

you know, a lot of the heavy lifting

comes from the files and I don't know

how much of the heavy lifting comes from

the source code itself. Obviously,

there's a lot of symbols there. The

obfuscation through the roof, visually

mind-boggling. But ASCII art didn't

really like land very hard to me and the

games themselves, maybe they could be a

lot of fun, but they're also just the

extra files. So just, you know,

it just didn't it just didn't tickle

that spot. You know the spot I'm talking

about. The good spot as they as the kids

call it. All right, so this next one,

look at it. It's a tornado. You may have

a tornado. At least that's what I think

it is or maybe it's like a crazy-looking

rose-like thing going on right there.

Now, when you run this one though, look

at what you see. That's right. It's like

a tornado simulator.

Look

at it go. You have some sort of 3D cube

spinning and then this tornado just in

the middle and the colors going up.

It's absolutely incredible.

Again, blown away. I'm blown away right

now. Look at this. I'm blowing, okay?

People, I'm being blown by the tornado.

This thing is just a one-of-a-kind

special. I love how they even have these

like shapes. It's almost like some sort

of perlin noise. How it kind of does

that like undulation where it has high

points and then it distributes them into

low points. Incredible.

For me, this one was just such a

spectacle. I loved it. The ASCII art and

the the simulation that runs is so

aligned and it's just again, you know,

that tickling. I know I'm I'm a cheap

I'm a sucker, okay? I'm a sucker for a

sweet tickling and that one got me. So

I'm I'm S plus-ing it, okay? I'm S

plus-ing it. That one blew me away,

metaphorically and literally. All right,

so the ASCII art to this one is pretty

interesting. You can see a scissor, a

comb, and a clock. Apparently

there's a little bit of a challenge also

within in code where you can actually

make it behave a touch differently if

you attempt to figure out how it works

and how to change its behavior. I in

fact did not do that because I kind of a

rookie when it comes to C, let alone

obfuscated C. I don't I don't think I

have it in me, okay? I don't got that

Larry Wall inside of me. So, the program

itself

an inverted clock, as you can see right

here. That is my time right now. That is

the time I'm at. I'm at 4:18 and this

thing is at

well, 4:18. Now, for whatever reason,

this terminal that I have running right

now is kind of like wigging out. The

other ones didn't wig out for me, so I

don't I don't know what's happening

here, but this still it it looks pretty

incredible. I don't really get the shape

of this one like the the the hourglass

side of things, but the the scissors

must be because you have to cut

something. The comb and the clock must

be some sort of

indication into what you need to cut and

what it is, but it just didn't land for

me, so I I'm rating this one a little

bit lower. Not

Not because it was cool, just because

the ASCII art didn't land for me. I just

didn't really get it, but you know,

it's awesome.

Bro, I couldn't write that. All right,

so here's this next one. It has this

nice little uh banner for the IOCCC and

what year it was on, 2020. And when you

run the program,

you get the following.

Star Wars. May the IOCCC

be

with you.

Honestly, for me this one's actually

shockingly impressive. A, they somehow

were able to make ASCII art look like

the letters were like coming away from

you. But not only that, I one time asked

an AI to make this exact same thing for

me in a video game where it could

actually use a graphics library and it

got nowhere close. I mean, it was

terrible. No, no, no, no, no. So, the

fact that you can just hello world

and

galaxy. You can just

run this program, provide whatever input

you want, and it just floats away like

this. Ah, for me, this one was pretty

amazing. All right, so for me, like,

yeah.

The ASCII art,

I didn't really care for it. It didn't I

I feel like it they could have done a

better job like arranging it. It should

have almost looked like how it looks

inside the program. At least be

something that kind of widens out and

kind of gives that perspective. I feel

like that would have been a big more

like a larger capture. Uh obviously, the

technical feat of making ASCII art look

like it's leaning down and going away

from you.

Very cool. So, I'm going to give this

it's a solid B for me. It's neat, okay?

Neat.

But that's that's far as that's as

that's as far as I can give it to you.

All right, right now,

can you guess what this one is? Look at

this. You have what appears to be a cog,

perhaps. Do you know what it is? I don't

think you know what this one is. I don't

think you're I don't think you are

prepared for what you are about to see.

That was a great pun, and I should

somehow have prepared for that or made

it earlier, and I did not. As you can

see right here, you can see 4 4 2, that

is how big my screen is. So, if I were

to zoom in, you can see that I have less

and less and less of them all the way

down here. And if I click one,

boom.

Hey, that's a three. Okay.

Interesting. What happens if I click

another one? Oh, I died. I clicked a

mine. Rer rer.

All right, let's try this again. I

clicked it It's supposed to give you

like kind of a little bit of an ocean on

your first click, okay? Cuz now it's

like, I don't know. Let's just randomly

click it. Okay, I got two and two. So,

that puts me in two kind of a bit of a

pickle. Oh, dang. Emotional

damage. Also, as you can see right here,

I clicked on this one. It should have

kind of opened up, don't you think?

There we go. Now we got something

opening, and as you can see, boom. So

good. So, there's probably two right

here. If you right Can you right click

on them to like select them? That'd be

super cool. Look at that. Boom. What?

Okay, so I don't know what I just did

there. Somehow that just marked a whole

bunch of them, yet I don't feel like I

did anything. Okay, and then I died.

Well, okay. Well, okay then. So, this

one is quite amazing. Obviously, the

ASCII art being a mine. That's what it's

supposed to be. I thought it was a cog.

And the fact that it's

it doesn't look like it's a fully

working game of Minesweeper, but

nonetheless, it's pretty radical. It

fits in your terminal. However big your

terminal is is how big the game is.

That's pretty neat. But the fact that it

does kind of have that bug and it's a

little bit goofy, I'm I'm putting it in

the C category, okay? I mean, yes, it's

it's very impressive. Obviously, the bug

it got me, okay? I didn't feel as like

amazing about that. But now it's time

for the last one. A Roman numeral L, as

you can see, okay? We're about to take

the L. Now, I saved this one for last

because I just don't think you're ready

for what you're about to see. No?

No, you're not. At least this was my

personal favorite, okay? This is This

one, okay?

Loved it. All right, so when you run the

program, it says type halt at the prompt

to terminate the program. When I press

enter,

it's actually

a running container. That's right. You

ever wonder what a fork bomb looks like?

You can fork bomb yourself. Yo, you

wanted to You wanted to like do a little

rmrf from the root? Yeah.

You're allowed to do that.

Bam.

Look at that. Hey, you can't remove all

those things. You're not allowed to do

that. Great. Halt's not found anymore.

Now I can't I can't quit the program,

okay? Now Now we're stuck. We're stuck

inside of

whatever this thing is. I love the

judges' remarks for this one. When we

ran this entry for the first time in a

virtual machine window, it felt like the

VM rebooted. Then, after the initial

feeling had subsided, we were able to

appreciate the entry in greater detail.

The authors remarks says that this is an

emulator capable of running a full

modern Linux system with minimal set of

features including all of this. I

I've never built a container so I don't

actually know how containers work. I've

watched some talks where someone kind of

walked through how you'd build a

container and it all kind of made sense

but the fact that somehow this giant L

produces a container in which I can fork

bomb myself in and then it's just like

walk it just I was

flabbergasted [snorts]

by the level of technical feat in this

one. Yes. Now that I have two problems

with this one of course even though this

one felt like my favorite. The first

problem is that you can see the ASCII

art it just didn't hit home for me. I

feel like

maybe turn it into a penguin or

something. I don't know. Anyways,

and the second one it was obviously not

as a visually cool but I'm still going

to put that in the S plus category just

because the technical feat of it all is

so beyond my ability to even comprehend

how they did that. And now I'm sure

there's a few of you that actually know

and understand it but me no.

No, I don't. I've never done that before

let alone in C let alone in that few

characters let alone making it into a

gigantic L. Just want to throw out that

Game Boy one more time that Game Boy

emulator. Holy cow, amazing. And then of

course the program that was a Pearl,

Ruby and C program the polyglot code.

I'm still I'm still like wowing by

myself. I just like sit in the corner

and just wow.

I don't even I don't even know what that

means. I hope you enjoyed this. There's

tons of submissions you should go

through them. There's so many incredible

ones and there was just too many to even

actually go through but I just figured

I'd pull out some that I found

particularly

neat. And for those if you're if somehow

you were one of the people that have

built this and I put you in the D

category just remember you're more

talented than I will ever be so your D

is still my like S triple plus, okay?

The name

is the Primagen.