Why?

[gonzohunter]

Why? Why? Why?

[mame]

Why not? Why not? Why not?

[jmorais]

not because it is easy but because it is hard

[Gabrielmtn]

George Mallory would say: "Because it was there"

[dsoprea]

It's awesome and inspired.

Computer Scientists and generally-terrific engineers often choose to do examples that are largely academic in nature because that engineer (or maybe -any- engineer) hasn't yet encountered that class of problem. They do this because the question can present a challenge to efficiency or elegance, or even defy a solution completely.

Often times, the journey produces lessons along the way that can be applied to other problems. On occasiona, it's a trainwreck that produces little fruit. However, when the answer is found, you might find new ways to do old things. If the answer is elegant, you can put another star next to your name attesting to the fact that there is one more question that you've never backed-down from, and answered beautifully.

I, for one, was astounded to find that, not only could he loop through fifty different languages, but that he ended up at the same code with which he began. This is a testament to how fundamental/efficient that each transient result was: there was no additional gibberish was produced by any specific one, which would likely produce more gibberish at one or more downstream steps.

As far as practicality is concerned, there is often a need to produce any number of libraries for programmers to develop against. The best of us find a way to define a structure that we can then permute to whatever language is required. Apache Thrift produces such a mechanism for client-libraries.

Thanks for doing this, Gabriel.

[mengzhuo]

Sheldon Cooper would say "Because we can"

[phyw]

mengzhuo, i would a button "like" for the comments.

[darth10]

Why not? Maybe this could be useful for showing off all open source lanauges? 😄

[mdesantis]

"Why?" Because it's beautiful and funny. It's "nerd art" :-)

[kaminskypavel]

ultimate derping.

[sheharyarn]

"Because I can, bitches!" 🍪

[dreamyguy]

Be cause

[Jiri-Kremser]

👍

[mindvox]

This is so awesome!

[captainpete]

🌷 🐢

[seclorum]

Why? Because. Because why? Because why because.

[devalih]

Shit happens

[Ismael-VC]

Beacuse it ...!

[prijindal]

One of the applications can be to encrypt a program
Let's say someone writes program in X and quine it and convert it to Y which can't be used to give back the original code untill run through some kind of custom compiler

[hauzer]

Autism.

[Arugin]

Oh.

[ignaciotcrespo]

Love it! I was creating a program that generates a quine java code, and found this piece of art. Good job! 👍

[rtheo]

Amazing achievement truly.
The next logical step of course would be to make this into a 100-step loop performing also some calculation like adding up from 1 to 100. That would be enough of a proof for the existence of Quine Combinators!

[vccabral]

[rtheo]

For the hell of it of course!

[merlano17]

Great Work :-)

[74274265j]

[i336]

Source

^{Was the first thing I thought of. Love this project}

[thierryrene]

this is a piece of art!

[RedMasterN]

I was going to ask the same question... WHY

[mar77i]

Because:

Programming is all about knowing when to boil the orange sponge donkey across the phillipines with an orangutang gorilla crossed with a ham sandwich to the fourth power of twelve across the nile with an awful headache from the previous night when all of alfred's naughty jalapeno peppers frog-marched the nordic elves across the loom-lined geronimo induced swamp donkey over and above the fortran fortified kilomanjaro fence past the meticulously crafted anti disgusting sponge cake scenario where all the hats doth quoteth the milk which is not unlike the super werewolf from the infinite realm of ninja-step. it's hard to define, really.

source: https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/why-im-the-best-programmer-in-the-world/1341/20

[xypnox]

“The reason anyone would, which they can't, is because they could, which they can't.” - Rick Sanchez