About Homespring.cloud

Homespring.cloud is a visual debugger and learning tool for the Homespring esoteric programming language.

The Homespring Language

Homespring is an Esoteric Programming Language, created by Jeff Binder in 2003.

Instead of the traditional variables, operators and flow control that most language possess, Homespring program are poems that describe a system of rivers. These rivers are populated by salmon which carry data around the system and handle input and output.

A simple program that outputs the string "Hello World!\n" before terminating:

Universe bear hatchery Hello. World!.
 Powers   marshy marshy snowmelt

The original tutorial is available to help learn the language more fully.

There have been three language specifications over the last 25 years:

• Jeff Binder's Official 2003 Spec
• Joe Neeman's Proposed 2005 Spec
• Cal Henderson's Updated 2026 Spec

This Debugger

Homespring programs, while simple and elegant, can be a challenge to write due to the lack of rivers in most text editors. This debugger was created by Cal Henderson to allow interactive visualiztion of a program's river system, without having to install or compile any complex software. Under the hood it uses the homespring.js interpreter, currently the most complete interpreter implementation.

The source code for this website is available on github.

Futher Reading

You can find links to all of the known implementations on the interpreters page.

The Homespring page on the Esolang Wiki has some basic information about the language.

Jeff Binder wrote a short history of the language in 2018.

Try It Online has an online Homespring version, though it always seems to time out after 60 seconds with no output.