🧠What the Heck is a Quine?
If you've spent enough time down the rabbit holes of programming, you've probably come across weird and wonderful concepts like esoteric languages, obfuscated code, and brain-melting puzzles. Today, let's meet one of the classics in the category of “code that makes you do a double take” — the Quine.
🧾 So, What is a Quine?
A Quine is a program that prints its own source code, without reading its source file.
In simpler terms: it's a piece of code that, when you run it, spits out itself. No file reading, no cheating. Pure logic. It’s named after philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who was into self-reference and logic — kind of the perfect namesake for this quirky code trick.
Here's a plain English analogy:
You write a sentence on paper. That sentence, when read aloud, exactly describes itself word for word.
Sounds crazy? Yep. Is it possible? Absolutely.
🧪 Quine in JavaScript
Let's look at a minimal (and classic) example of a Quine in JavaScript:
In this code:
- We define a function quine.
- We convert that function to a string using .toString().
- Then we wrap and execute it to print itself.
This is a valid Quine because the function doesn’t read its source file — it only uses JavaScript’s ability to convert a function into its string representation.