2 weeks ago - Malbolge (/mælˈboʊldʒ/) is a public-domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge. It was specifically designed to be almost impossible to use, via a counter-intuitive "crazy operation", base-three ...

November 13, 2025 - Malbolge, invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, is an esoteric programming language designed to be as difficult to program in as possible. The first "Hello, world!" program written in it was produced by a Lisp program using a local beam search of the space of all possible programs.

October 12, 2023 - Because the malbolge compiler is a dick that likes to swap or change instructions, and to interpret instructions differently depending on the offset in the source file. The repeating pattern is a series of NOP instructions (they do nothing) to force the changes to happen there, outside of the meaningful code parts.

July 31, 2023 - The world of programming languages ... use. Created in 1998 by Ben Olmstead, Malbolge is an esoteric programming language intentionally constructed to confound and bewilder....

March 18, 2026 - Malbolge was the sixth layer of the Nine Hells of Baator. Ruled by the archdevil Glasya,[6] the Tyranny of Turmoil, as it was known,[7] was the prison of the Nine Hells where devils found guilty of breaking the law underwent years of torturous ...

Invented in 1998 by Ben Olmstead, Malbolge isn't so much a programming language for humans, but a machine language for a fictional 10-trit ternary-based virtual CPU with 3 registers and a fixed size memory block.

A Collection of Malbolge language examples collected from across the internet

While watching Elementary I saw a reference to a obscure programming language called “Malbolge“. Malbolge or Malebolge is the eighth circle of Dante’s hell.

In Malbolge, code and data are stored together in the same memory. However, when writing Malbolge programs, it makes sense to distinguish between memory cells that are actually used for the code and those that are used for data.

January 19, 2007 - I decided that for today, I'd show the most thoroughly evil programming language ever devised. This is a language so thoroughly evil that it's named Malbolge after a circle of hell. It's so evil that it's own designer was not able to write a hello world program!

Malbolge is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge. Malbolge was specifically designed to be almost impossible to use, via a ...

August 5, 2021 - On behalf of the HN gestalt, I award this program the official Hacker News Bloatiest Bloat award for 2021. HN commentators are now invited to derail the perennial bloat arguments with constant observations that "At least it's not as bloated as that Lisp interpreter written in Malbolge."

June 26, 2023 - What is truly nuts about Malbolge is the ‘crazy operation’ and the concept of self-altering code. After each instruction is executed, it is encrypted, effectively altering the instructions of the program as it is running. Yeah, you read that right.

September 26, 2025 - Malbolge is the sixth layer of Baator, and host to the Ancient Baatorian, and generally a very short run with a high loot yield.

Malbolge is one of the most popular esoteric programming languages, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, the Malebolge.

July 9, 2024 - Malbolge is an esoteric programming language created by Ben Olmstead in 1998 and is known for its extreme difficulty in writing programs due to its intentionally confusing design.

March 20, 2023 - It was created in 1998 by Ben Olmstead, who was inspired by a passage in Dante’s “Inferno” that describes the ninth circle of Hell as being named “Malbolge.” Olmstead designed Malbolge to be a deliberately difficult language to program in, with a syntax that is intentionally confusing and a set of instructions that are counterintuitive.

November 27, 2025 - Malbolge is an esoteric programming language created by Ben Olmstead in 1998. It is widely considered one of the hardest and most unreadable programming languages ever made. The language was intentionally designed to be confusing, unpredictable, ...

April 5, 2014 - “Malbolge, invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, is an esoteric programming language designed to be as difficult to program in as possible. The first ‘Hello, world!’ program written in it was produced by a Lisp program using a local beam search ...

March 21, 2025 - Malbolge [mahl-bol-jeh] is a public domain esoteric programming language invented by Ben Olmstead in 1998, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno, the Malebolge.