Painful Language

A language whose design encourages UnmaintainableCode?, if not out-and-out IncomprehensibleProgramming?.

The CanonicalExample? of this is PerlLanguage, whose "ThereIsMoreThanOneWayToDoIt" philosophy has the unfortunate corollary "So to do maintenance, you have to learn every blasted one!"

Perl as a language has less a design than a thousand special features flying in close formation.

Ever tried writing out a COBOL program with a pencil? That's painful ;-) --

(I threw out my blank COBOL coding sheet pads only 4-5 years ago. But a pencil? Real COBOL coders use pen, and then only when there is no keypunch free!) -- JimRussell

If you have, please add yourself to HadToUseCobol!

COBOL itself strikes me as only mildly painful within its problem domain (but then, I've never HadToUseCobol, so take that with a GrainOfSalt) - now, socket programming with CobolScript, on the other hand... -- AlistairYoung

There are also deliberately painful languages, like UnLambdaLanguage, MalbolgeLanguage, InterCal, and BackWardLanguage.

Unlambda is not deliberately painful. Unlambda is 100% pure combinator graph reductor, so it just isn't readable. Writing Unlambda programs is not that hard: the Unlambda tutorial shows you how to do it. From then on, you just have to think in a tail-recursive way.

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Nominations

• SQL*Plus SQL*Plus is an ok language, it's the environment that's painful.
• AbapLanguage - much like CobolLanguage
• Any language besides the one you usually develop in

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See, obviously, LanguagePissingMatch (or possibly LanguageGriping?), PythonVsPerl, WriteOnlyLanguage