Nearly every year since 1984, The International Obfuscated C Code Contest has been held among programmers to see who can generate the most creative displays of C code craftiness. It struck me that the mental exertions required to excel in the obviously silly (but challenging nonetheless) standards of the IOCCC closely parallel those involved in the composition of poetry. This can be seen most clearly in the work of E.E. Cummings, in which grammatical edicts are often used and abused for the sake of expression, rather than tastefully implemented for their actual purpose: clarity.

Take a look at this poem from his book "No Thanks" published in 1935:

If you've ever had the great fortune of beholding a C program, you can quickly spot some similarities. This is evident simply in the kinds of punctuation Cummings uses. (Keep in mind that these are not exclusively C traits, but that's just what I am familiar with.) Foregoing common commas, periods, and apostrophes, he often uses parentheses and dashes to break up his individual thoughts into miniature hierarchies of thoughts which he can revisit later in the poem. This kind of modularity is one of the primary characteristics of any good program.

In C, to end a statement, you use a semicolon instead of a period. Cummings concludes his poem with a semicolon, and he uses colons throughout this poem to indicate when we want transitions to occur in the reader's train of thought. Right in the middle of the poem, he put an exclamation point, which looks like a condition you would use in a program. "!p" translates to "not p," "p is false," or "p is equal to zero."

To speculate upon the poetic reasons why he chose to put an exclamation point right there, it kind of reminds me of the focal point in a painting. When you look at paintings that are like this poem, in that they have a lot of noise and no real substance, the focal point is usually what saves it from being complete garbage.

Take a look at this concrete poem of a program from the 1986 IOCCC. Its only purpose is to output "choo choo."

Let me remind you that neither of these linguistic displays are great works of code or poetry. That's not what the IOCCC is about. At least, that's not one of its stated goals. And E.E. Cummings is really an excellent writer of both poetry and prose. And I'm sure E ricM arsh all- went on to write some really purposeful and effective code. I just want to illustrate that the more structured percentage of poets and the more clever percentage of programmers have the same fundamental poetic instinct.

To drive the point home, I'm going to leave you with a side by side comparison of "Fl..." by E.E. Cummings and an excerpt from another IOCCC winner.