Tabloid: The Clickbait Headline Programming Language

by sadeshmukhon 11/9/25, 2:53 AMwith 46 comments
by lxgron 11/9/25, 5:37 AM

Missed opportunity to title the post/submission “Will this programming language revolutionize software development?” :)

by gnabgibon 11/9/25, 3:57 AM

Popular in:

2020 (245 points, 38 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24578749

2024 (217 points, 29 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40964261

by illusive4080on 11/9/25, 3:11 AM

Missed opportunity for loops to be

BREAKING NEWS … KEEP READING TO DISCOVER

by Ancapistanion 11/9/25, 7:37 AM

How about CONSIDERED HARMFUL as a postfix negation operator?

by Jeremy1026on 11/9/25, 3:50 AM

BREAKING NEWS! This is the perfect amount of stupid. I'm going to see if I can't convince my team to convert our codebase over ASAP. FOLLOW ME to find out how it goes.

by NamlchakKhandroon 11/9/25, 3:52 AM

Now we just need the companion turing complete languages:

Thunderfoot - write screenplays for youtube videos debunking articles written in Tabloid

Fisker - Writes troll posts to discord/irc/steam community to highlight how awesome TOPIC in AWESOME ARTICLE written in Tabloid is

Shitlist - Generates awesomelists repos on github for TOPIC

by noduermeon 11/9/25, 3:56 AM

This is refreshingly ridiculous.

by dbacaron 11/9/25, 5:46 AM

The title of the post should have been "SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT".

by halaproon 11/9/25, 7:19 AM

I'm more of a KTHXBYE kinda guy.

by Kyeon 11/9/25, 11:13 AM

The natural complement to LOLCODE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

by gnarlouseon 11/9/25, 4:44 AM

Missed opportunity:

The joke should be that regardless of the program you write, nothing happens. No real signal, just like most real clickbait content.

by arendtioon 11/9/25, 6:30 AM

I think it could be improved by ADDING A FEATURE with multiple texts for the same mechanic.

Less repetitive == MORE AWESOME

And of course, harder to learn/understand.

by jonplacketton 11/9/25, 7:21 AM

This is the heart and soul of hacker news

by hunterpayneon 11/9/25, 6:17 AM

So brainrot and brainfuck had a baby?

by cat-whispereron 11/9/25, 6:48 AM

If you make sure it follows the style of COBOL. we can document it in the history books!

by fjfaaseon 11/9/25, 8:43 AM

I used this language in a workshop on parser construction at MCH2022. The particepants where asked to construct the grammar for the language, which proved harder than I had expected for most of them.

by paultopiaon 11/9/25, 3:49 AM

It’s been too long since something like this has happened. Kudos.

by csmantleon 11/9/25, 4:48 AM

This would benefit from combining the literal rules from TrumpScript [0]:

> All numbers must be strictly greater than 1 million. The small stuff is inconsequential to us.

[0]: https://github.com/samshadwell/TrumpScript

by holysoleson 11/9/25, 5:26 AM

Love the energy and keyword selections. But also probably a great exercise to have gone through that I've always considered doing

by BrenBarnon 11/9/25, 6:44 AM

Write amazing programs with this one weird trick

by arvigeuson 11/9/25, 9:00 AM

Not written in Rust? Instant pass!

by hamashoon 11/9/25, 6:10 AM

Love `TOTALLY RIGHT` and `COMPLETELY WRONG` as boolean, but `TRUTH` and `FAKE NEWS` sounds better. Too much social media consumption makes me feel that "truth" or "fact" are kinda sarcastic.

It also reminds me TrumpScript: https://github.com/samshadwell/TrumpScript

by zamadatixon 11/9/25, 7:31 AM

This gave me a laugh! Some variation of "the Top Five Most Popular Quirks and Features" from the description could be a good way to define arrays on size n (e.g. perhaps numerical instead of Five).

by artemonsteron 11/9/25, 11:21 AM

Dereferencing pointers: „click here to find out more“

by AbuAssaron 11/9/25, 4:55 AM

this is hilarious, thanks for the laughs!

by olivierestsageon 11/10/25, 12:15 AM

And That's a Good Thing

by dcdc123on 11/9/25, 5:59 AM

I love it.