A quine is something simple to describe yet surprisingly challenging to implement– a program which outputs exactly its own source-code. It is something of a rite-of-passage for an engineering afficianado. For those that consider ourselves one level beyond afficianado we always are looking to up the ante. I took two years exploratory years off after high school, and remember them fondly. Those were the days I could explore anything I wanted. Time was so abundant and problems were so scarce that I’d take on challenges like quines recreationally.
It’s a magical place to be in, when you any path feels possible and no obligations feels mandatory. It’s a time when one’s world-view is fully open, and interesting opportunities seem everywhere. It’s a time before traditional adulthood, where one can feel exhausted by unending obligations (cable bill, health insurance, change my oil, arrange my 401k, excercise more, sleep more, read more, relax more, setup dentist appointment, pickup groceries, return that item, answer those emails to those family members).
Once we’re in the “real world” it can be a challenge to remember that initial feeling of possibility. Once the lionshare of our time is spoken for, one may switch modes from expanding exploration to reduction. A mode where we filter our world into a functional place of checklists and routines to optimize staying afloat when our time, attention, and concern run short and we must ration them.
Anyways, I reminisce. But back in that era, one thing my friends and I would do is make coding challenges for each other. After a friend introduced me to “brainfuck,” a language with only 6 commands all represented as single characters, I challenged him to write a quine in brainfuck. I can see by googling that many other people like us are out there, who, like us, have been to that place where we are hungry for the next challenge to create for ourselves.
Recently I found my quine from back then it brought back memories.
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