TrumpScript: A Theme Language Done Right
Theme esolangs (e.g. ArnoldC, LOLCODE) can be divisive for esolangers, as they often get the lion’s share of attention from people less familiar with the form, while rarely investigating much of interest about programming languages. However, TrumpScript, the latest theme esolang to pop up across the Web, gets a lot of things right. Whether you find it funny or not is subjective, but take a look at this insane rant of a program:
make magic, not lies; if Sanders is fact: I'll tell you "Bush was never president"! America is great.
The flexibility of writing code in TrumpScript is also a relief; Typing TALK TO THE HAND for the fiftieth time in an ArnoldC program can be a drag, but the one command that’s repeated in every TrumpScript program, “America is great.” gets funnier the more incoherent the rest of the program becomes.
TrumpScript also carries over Trump’s (il)logic into the behavior of the code itself, rather than just being a version of Python with sillier keywords. The first three attributes of the language listed on their github are all about behavior:
No floating point numbers, only integers. America never does anything halfway.
All numbers must be strictly greater than 1 million. The small stuff is inconsequential to us.
There are no import statements allowed. All code has to be home-grown and American made.
TrumpScript also “will automatically correct Forbes' $4.5B to $10B.”
In this interview on Inverse, co-creator Chris Brown says “In what I would consider proper TrumpScript style: 80 percent of the words you write should probably get dropped by the compiler and be completely unnecessary to the program.”
The esolang Shakespeare (one of the first theme languages) encodes programs into another command-based structure, that of stage directions. It works because of the confluence between these forms. TrumpScript encodes commands into something far less orderly, and so more removed from mainstream code: the incoherent and declamatory babbling of our next president.
