Abstract

e?xpress is an esoteric programming language that explores how emotion and poetics can be encoded within code. As a multicoded esolang, it plays with the norms of computing and reveals the layers of meaning embedded within code (Temkin, 2020). In particular, it explores the rich poetic potential within regular expressions, likening matching multiple strings to encompassing multiple possibilities. The language contains features inspired by Dan Waber’s exploration of regular expressions as poetic notation (Waber, 2011), the poetic shader programming language in:verse (Aneja, 2020), and the Esopo family of poetic programming languages (Hicks, 2016). By taking feminist/queer (Gaboury, 2018) and critical code studies (Marino, 2020) approaches to code poetry and language design, e?xpress explores poetic ideas of ambiguity, searching, plurality, multiple truths, and storytelling through the medium of code.