The Performance Art Programmer - writes code not because the code has any use, but for the purpose of making the code hard to understand. Those trained in
obfuscation of code and
obscure programming languages will often write things simply because the writing of the program would be interesting, or at least
difficult. It is not easy to explain why this is done to someone who does not
understand already-- it has to do with
impressing people with your skill in a
difficult task, and a lot more often with
tripping people out with source code that
screws with their heads. Performance art programming is pure art, with all function removed; function is irrelevant, the only relevant thing is the act of creation of something impressive. Function only serves to taint the purity.
See also INTERCAL,
unlambda,
obfuscated perl or the
IOCCC.
This may be alternately called The Upright Citizens Brigade Programmer (if it is conceptually elegant, startlingly creative, and technically impressive), or The Karen Finley Programmer (if it is just plain scary, if it's hackish as in mindless drivel but not hackish as in weird shortcuts or Alan Cox, and if you have this feeling that there's probably some kind of art in there somewhere, but it's just kind of hard to find the point.)