Wenyan

Judgement

What it is

Developer tool

What it does

An esoteric programming language written in classical Chinese, compiling to JavaScript, Python and Ruby.

Adopt it when

You are curious about language design or classical Chinese and want something playful.

Watch out

A novelty language, unmaintained since 2023.

Ready for

Experimental

Runs as

Command line

Built with

TypeScript

How established

Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v0.3.4.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Wenyan → TypeScript → Go → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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