A Competition for Unreadable Code?

Let's explore the winning submissions of The International Obfuscated C Code contest! Held every year, the IOCCC is a celebration of the syntactical quirks and unique features of C, encouraging submitters to create the most unreadable and unique code possible.
In this video, you'll also learn how to quickly deobfuscate IOCCC submissions using various reverse-engineering tricks, turning the indecipherable syntax into something more human-understandable.
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IOCCC website: www.ioccc.org/
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Timestamps:
00:00 Unique C features
03:05 Demangling a Death Star
06:45 A Reverse Engineer's Secret Weapon
07:59 Crazy Time
09:44 An interesting Grid
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LaurieWired Socials:
linktr.ee/lauriewired

[@ersetzbar.]

I had a coworker who did a novel way of sorting his code... he ordered them by string length, making his code look like a christmas tree... in production

[@mountainsmakemehorny]

Did it look pretty?

[@EpicNicks]

@@mountainsmakemehorny asking the important questions

[@liquidsonly]

I approve.

[@denilsonwerling1660]

This is so funny, definitely going to mention it to my coworkers. It seems coding that sort of program, is the right order to deliver the joke!

[@vizualyse]

One could say, your coworker did it in a "Noël" way...

[@OhhCrapGuy]

I'm a little sad she didn't mention the most coveted prize in the contest, "Best Abuse of the Rules", usually awarded when someone finds a way to so horrifically abuse the rules that they have to be changed going forward. In 1994, "smr" submitted the smallest self-reproducing program, a program that, when executed, outputs it's own source code. He achieved this by creating a source file, the only source file in the submission, which was 0 bytes long. Exactly 0 bytes. It was empty. However, due to clever abuse of the Makefile, the compiler still output an executable. An empty one. What did it do? Nothing. It just instantly exited. But it's output of absolutely nothing was technically all of his source code.

[@kxmode]

If Seinfeld was a programmer

[@OhhCrapGuy]

@@kxmode not entirely sure how this implicates smr in being weirdly into concerningly young teenager girls, but sure, alright.

[@girlswithgames]

do you have a link to this? would love to know what he did in the makefile lol

[@SDRicky]

Her voice is sweeter than honey 🍯.

[@kxmode]

@@OhhCrapGuy Seinfield was known for episodes about nothing.

[@soyasuki4531]

"Obfuscated Code" - Or as my predecessor called it "Production Code".

[@switchi8663]

this cracked me up man good job

[@n.-_]

the cobol experience

[@gagongtarantado]

😂

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

From now onward, I'll end of my main() functions as "piss out".

[@vicsar]

I dare you.

[@zaper2904]

change it to piss off instead.

[@oconsertador9021]

Could you put "fuck you", instead?

[@yascilisaowsyj8636]

piss be upon you

[@astropgn]

Oh, I didn't know I could submit all of my code to the IOCCC. My files look so bad, I am probably a great contender.

[@godnyx117]

Oh boy, you won't imagine! There is ALWAYS someone more crazy...

[@ABCABC-sw8mh]

😂

[@ABCABC-sw8mh]

My code: } ;0 nruter {)(niam tni

[@kadse417]

Just write it in C++ - obfuscation enough.

[@mjthebest7294]

L M A O

[@lofl6968]

yeah, but you become desensitized... after like 10-15 years anyway

[@MrBarberousse]

The creator of Perl, Larry Wall won 2 prizes in the IOCCC. His initials are LW just like Laurie Wired. Coincidence? Who knows!

[@john.dough.]

I love the aesthetic of your videos, combined with your clear expertise and knowledge. Thanks for sharing! :]

[@vicsar]

Yeah, no doubt. Do what you enjoy, for sure. Respect!

[@fios4528]

I'm really curious how much time the set design took

[@fios4528]

I'm genuinely floored by the production quality of these videos and your ability to communicate so effectively

[@ayonsamajder]

indeed programming is an art

[@illegalsmirf]

more like a fart

[@kiwi84]

I’ve been falling out of computer science for a while now cause of college burnout but your videos have relit my computer science flame! Its crazy the difference that good presentation and teaching can make. Keep up the great work 😃

[@danielpintard7382]

obsessed with the lain aesthetic, one of my favorite anime of all time and was a catalyst in developing my interest in computer science

[@ScottSUP...]

Hey Laurie, your exploration of unreadable code is fascinating! Keep inspiring us with your insights and discoveries. 🚀

[@MrStarTraveler]

The "peace out;" got me rolling on the floor! XD

[@mohammedgoder]

#include "cstdio" #define ever (;;) int main() { for ever printf("no. just no."); }

[@MrStarTraveler]

@@mohammedgoder Rofl 🤣

[@TomS699]

My college professor won this 2 times. He loved talking about it

[@ammdres]

Do you have the links to his submissions? I would love to see them

[@plaintext7288]

@ammdres Me too

[@ninocraft1]

i would also boast about this, what an achievement 😂❤

[@heisthazey7311]

good work on the editing as of late - the transitions between content and animation have gotten much faster and it feels very tight. I really enjoy the production value of your channel ty!

[@trevorkirby3781]

Glad to see the obfuscated c competition is still going. My favourite was always the love letter exchange.

[@TheKhalamar]

They have the opposite contest for Perl. The goal is to write code that people can actually understand.

[@Kris-qn4bn]

Amazing video idea, with amazing video quality! Thank you for your work!

[@internetplumber]

Hah, good to see this, I was thinking of the IOCCC whilst watching the Asuka Roasts video the other day...

[@OneEyedJack1970]

I almost lost my mind trying to decipher what in the hell temple of apshai was doing. This was back when I was 15 or 16 and trying to transfer my copy from cassette to disk. I got most of it to disk, but still had to load the fonts and levels from the tape drive.

[@052Ryder]

I legit came across live game code that did the following: #define f*** return #define sh** ; It was a cpp file that contained many methods returning pointers to 'this'. Fun times. P.S. You are a gift to the engineering world Laurie

[@svenvandevelde1]

Thank you for sharing this interesting subject.

[@agg5324]

I love the vibe of this channel

[@maxmustermann5590]

How have I never found this channel before. Love the content!!

[@DavidLindes]

Ahh, chongo strikes again! (Landon Curt Noll, usual username chongo, one of the founders of this, is someone I used to work with. Fun guy to interact with. And he did good by creating this, IMHO.) Thanks for exploring it a bit and sharing it with new audiences!

[@tenv]

Great videos! It's so satifying to see you clean up and decipher stuff like this. You should consider ricing your desktop to go with the rest of your video aestetic, on Linux I'm sure there must be some DE that can recreate the kinds of faux-windows you have for your intro/webcam.

[@mytechnotalent]

It is interesting how the macro looks so much more readable after you reformatted w/o \. Nice Job Laurie.

[@stacksmasherninja7266]

these were great examples! if you wish to continue this series and want to take a look at more submissions, I highly recommend Nicholas Carlni's submission for tic tac toe! a video on obfuscating your code to look cool would also be great :) super happy to see ioccc here

[@saikat93ify]

Wow, great video. I learnt something new. I participate in contests avidly and did not know about this.

[@delibellus]

Awesome content as always!

[@willitine]

Hi Laurie. Wow I love how you popped out from opening a app on the desktop! That’s pretty cool. For whatever reason the theme of you speaking like that in a pc window reminds me of Back to the Future The Ride when I was little. Awesome vibes! Anyhow interesting video. I’m gonna watch it now. Hope you are having a great day.

[@andymitchell2146]

I've been training for this all my life without knowing!

[@kristenmgr]

That intro was the final straw !!! I'm subscribing !!!

[@ammdres]

I love so much the style of your videoss and also your setup

[@KarlaKloppstock]

This is awesome, thanks Laurie! Good thing that one can make C code unreadable, while for few other languages that's the default.

[@AccurateBurn]

great video laurie, super interesting topic

[@henrycgs]

I remember having loads of fun with the preprocessor back in the day. I made a header file that turned C extremely verbose and told a friend that was just how it looked like

[@TarasZakharchenko]

Great OS of your choice!

[@denovo3949]

Love the background of your computer screen!

[@jawad9757]

I love [ab]using C macros as if they're C++ templates

[@shanehebert396]

I worked with a guy who won in one of the IOCCC categories way back in the day.

[@BurstingVeins1]

I never realized that doing code in that way could be a thing, but then just looking at that code is driving my hyper efficient coding OCD insane.

[@MrBoko1234]

the gameplay at the end caught me off guard lmao, great vid

[@Slycooper2456]

She streamed Burnout Paradise last Saturday it has so many hilarious moments, its on her Twitch channel.

[@PointEndClick]

This video is awesome.

[@Yupppi]

Very cool. Reminds me of figuring out what malware does, saw Low Level Learning do some of that cybersecurity challenge stuff. Also the circle code was quite aesthetic. I'd guess nvim to be one of the easier text editors to start fixing the visual look of the code and the #defines, otherwise it'd feel like a bit of a mess. The nvim plugins that follow common style for the language also helping out. These are probably the best ways to make your coworkers mad or get fired.

[@joseph-montanez]

"This makes C a great candidate for creating some really unreadable code" - Flashbacks of Coldfusion from Adobe

[@fridje]

Can you do an asuka rates your obfuscated code competition

[@dominikb1284]

based

[@CyReVolt]

What you see in the real world: A header file defining a 20 KB block of bytes that is memcopied and then executed, taking a pointer to a block of configuration data. Such blobs are what some vendors provide for integrating their secret stuff into your custom firmware.

[@davidomar742]

don't wanna know what kind of hallucinogenic drugs you got to be on to do this type of programming lol

[@Nekro9000]

this has to be the most insane glow up i've ever seen

[@MegaMech]

You can sort of skip all of this by printing the preprocessor output to the console. If you want to see really unreadable code check out mk64 decomp.

[@sheykenasababy]

This channel's became one of my favorites after 2 videos. I'd pay for this content.

[@ruslankudriachenko5673]

Really cool video. The code is madness :)

[@MrHaggyy]

If you want a medal from your coworkers for best code ever just pack every function and data object in one giant void array and cast it in the program as needed. There is a time for this when you change hardware configs at runtime with full bandwidth read/writes but other than that ...

[@kajal_sen]

Nice new look😁

[@yanikb.1312]

Title: unreadable code competition Me: oh boy sounds like the IOCCC

[@JohannesDavidsen2024]

That's cool snake, very nice 👍

[@patrick1020000]

The Underhanded C Competition is also interesting, though it looks like it is no longer held

[@easyelectronics4364]

People out there are really insane 😮

[@NewLondonMarshall]

I love your channel :)

[@JonathanZigler]

I liked the pixel art Ein.

[@MrAminmohamed]

Do you think you can code a perceptron using assembly or even a old language like basic or turbo Pascal ?

[@geralde.5724]

But what if you debugged it 🤔 would it get confused what line to highlight?

[@devinlauderdale9635]

Laurie, where do you get that windows xp era theme from???

[@fallinginthed33p]

The demo scene back in the day produced insane graphics directly using assembly. Now code optimization is used for malware 😅

[@zetopr8058]

You like lain too? I saw it on the intro lol Noiiiice damn

[@hukuxms]

You have very creative intros :D

[@zetronman]

lmao, that last one looks like the Fallout 3 hacking screen

[@obinator9065]

Yandere Dev: Prepare for trouble! COBOL Engineers: and make it double!

[@BlueIsLeet]

6:10 idk if that's a 'fix', looks like it's a directive only meant to run on Win32 devices (from the ifdef), and it patches main to work on windows properly

[@sinistar3198]

What if someone built one of these around taking as long as possible to manually set up for most autoformatters?

[@KaranChecker]

Here's an idea for a great generative AI project - a gen AI code which can unobfuscate code like a champ, ergo the most readable code from obfuscated code

[@fafo_o]

the laincore is immaculate

[@samuelschwager]

there is also the underhanded c contest

[@prudentibus]

Not interested in the video, but youtube recommend me it, and I must admit you have great content, I hope you will inspire more girls do actual stuff.

[@jesseparrish1993]

When will we connect to the wired? You're keeping me in suspense.

[@tommyhuffman7499]

Pretty cool to see Yandex in your list!

[@cyrusgolden4766]

You look like Daphne in This Video, Cool Video!

[@itismezed]

how do you not have more subscribers?!

[@alejorag]

My code is already unreadable enough, I might keep an eye and try out for the next edition so at least I make something out of it

[@c0p0n]

There are no perl obfuscated code competitions because that'd be stating the obvious

[@nunnukanunnukalailailai1767]

In the industry thats called job security smh

[@hydrogen5087]

How do I get that task bar? Please help!

[@kensmith5694]

Single letter variables seems like a less than ideal thing to do. Compilers allow 32 characters. You can make the first name 32 upper case "O". The next one will have a zero in the right most place and so on like counting in binary. This will let you have a lot of names. #define can define a name to be just about any token so the operators etc can all be made into 32 character things too. The body of the program can then be neat columns of 32 characters to do something like make the US flag running down page.

[@oyasumigabriel]

I really need a tutorial on how to make windows look like that again

[@ulisesapaza9469]

Me with nested ternary operators: 😮

[@SagarBediOfficial]

@lauriewired Song name / opening sound / bgm name ?

[@vk3fbab]

Are these programs or applications? I would have said programs. Is there a difference between a program and an application?

[@NavaroSFX]

i'm using that same taskbar and start button.. but black lol

[@JuusoAlasuutari]

Yes, this is the best sport. Also look up a close cousin, cursed C.

[@joealos]

Hate to be that person, but i loved the wallpaper. Would you mind sharing a link for it?

[@ismailkerouata3948]

Bruh always wondering what is that OS, some kind of hardened windowsXP?

[@SystemsMedicine]

A much harder competition would be for C/C++ programmers to attempt to write exceptional readable and clear code. There would be no need to actually have a prize to award.

[@axMf3qTI]

Someone is fan of Serial Experiments Lain.

[@prima_ballerina]

05:26 : It's not a good a idea to replace a #define macro within the code which is part of an #ifdef statement.

[@ferencgaborsimon245]

My regular code is obfuscated enough, even for me, without even trying.

[@Killerkraft975]

Before watching the video: it creates a 3d spinning donut/tourus using ascii

[@kata1000]

lmao i have to bookmark this

[@marcsfeh]

WOW! She's literally lain

[@TheKr0ckeR]

She definitely didnt see my code.