In a recent email exchange André mentioned this intriguing entity named “128 language Ouroborous quine“. Created by Yusuke Endoh, it is “a Ruby program that generates a Rust program that generates a Scala program that generates …(through 128 languages in total)… a REXX program that generates the original Ruby code again.”
Organized with an alphabetical order, the transition from one language to the next forms a “quine”, which can be defined as a program that prints its own source code to the screen. The “ouroboros” metaphor (a circular symbol that depicts a snake/dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth) is also interesting as it shows the circular character of the performance.
Why do I blog this? Even though this “Ouroboros quine” may not exactly qualify as a digital entity per se, I find it curious enough to consider it as a candidate for the menagerie; perhaps closer to code poetry and esolang performance.
Machine Mirabilia: observing the digital menagerie 