DEV Community: Boris Orekhov

Poetry in Code

Boris Orekhov — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:08:00 +0000

Poetry in Code: When Code Becomes Poetry

Have you ever written poetry in Java? Or C++? It turns out there’s a whole genre at the intersection of programming and poetry — code poetry. Not just poems about computers or programmers, but actual executable programs that are also poetic texts.

Ten years ago I published a paper proposing a method for analysing such works. Here are the key ideas — I think the dev.to community will find them interesting.

What is it?

Imagine writing code in Java, Python, or even CSS — it runs and works. But at the same time, the source code itself reads like a poem: rhythm, metre, imagery.

Here’s an example from Habr (2013):

if (newGame) resources.free();

s = FILENAME + 3;

setLocation(); load(s);

loadDialog.process();

try { setGamerColor(RED); }
catch(Exception e) { reset(); }

while (notReady) { object.make();
  if (resourceNotFound) break; }

byte result; // change to int!

music();

System.out.print("");

This Java code can be compiled and executed. And when read aloud, it follows a strict trochaic tetrameter. The author deliberately arranged the accents so that the rhythm aligns with the poetic metre.

How to classify such works?

In the paper I proposed three main analytical criteria:

1. Programming language choice

High‑level languages (Python, PHP, Perl) — closer to humans, accessible to a wider audience.
Low‑level languages (assembly) — elitist, requiring deep expertise.
Dead languages (Pascal, Cobol) — like Latin poetry, archaic.

Example from a Stanford poetry slam (C++):

class For_every {
public:
  void ngular(){cout << endl << "I";};
  void que(){cout<<"f";};
  void ng(){cout<<"w";};
  void ghting(){cout << "d";};
  void ving(){cout << "e";};
  void on(){cout << " n";};
};

int main() {
  For_every i;
  i.ngular(); i.quet(); i.ng();
  i.ving(); i.ghting();
  i.vidual(); i.on();
}

Thanks to variable names (i, us) and method names, the sequence produces a phrase: "I fought we will surely seperately" — the theme of “I vs. we”.

2. Functional load

What does the program do? Even if pragmatically “useless”, the program’s intended behaviour matters.

Example: an infinite loop in C as a metaphor for addiction:

void addiction() {
  int mind = 1;
  while (true) {
    mind = mind + 1;
    if (mind < 0) break;
  }
}

An infinite loop is usually considered a bug, but here it becomes an artistic device.

3. Dependence on natural language

Can code poetry avoid relying on English? That’s the holy grail. Most authors use English words as variable names — e.g., an SQL query:

INSERT ‘your hand’ INTO ‘mine’
SELECT ‘restaurant’ FROM ‘nearby’
WHERE ‘you would’ LIKE ‘to date’;

This is essentially English wrapped in SQL syntax. But if one could express meaning purely through the programming language itself (without borrowed natural language) — that would be a new art form, understandable to any developer regardless of their mother tongue.

Not just “normal” languages

At the Code Poetry Slam (Stanford, 2013–2015), even non‑Turing‑complete languages like CSS or lists of HTTP status codes are accepted.

For example:

201 created
200 OK
100 continue
303 see other
302 found
409 conflict
403 forbidden
520 origin error
...

These are Apache web server response codes. But arranged like this, they evoke a lyrical mood — reminiscent of human life with its errors, redirects, and successes.

Or CSS:

.ocean {
  color: cornflowerblue;
  pitch: high;
  overflow: visible;
}
.boat {
  color: firebrick;
  transform: rotate(94deg);
  float: none;
}
.rescue-team {
  visibility: visible;
}

That’s already a narrative about a capsized boat and a rescue team.

What’s next?

I think this practice is more than a hype. Behind it are:

therapeutic relief (programmers unwind through creativity);
carnivalisation of professional language;
the search for new expressive means.

Of course, when the element of contrast wears off, the wave may subside. But for now, such texts keep appearing, and a subculture has already formed around them. Over time, researchers will amass a whole corpus of “poetic programs”.

Link to the full paper

If you want to dive deeper, here’s the PDF (in Russian, but with an English abstract and plenty of code examples):

🔗 https://nevmenandr.github.io/portfolio/assets/pdf/21.pdf

APA citation:

Orekhov, B. (2016). Stikhi v programmnom kode: sovremennyy opyt i metodika analiza [Poetry in program code: Contemporary experience and analysis methods]. Kritika i Semiotika, (2), 94–101. https://nevmenandr.github.io/portfolio/assets/pdf/21.pdf

BibTeX citation:

@article{Orekhov2015programmpoetry,
  title = {Стихи в программном коде: современный опыт и методика анализа},
  author = {Орехов, Борис},
  year = {2016},
  journal = {Критика и семиотика},
  number = {2},
  pages = {94--101},
  issn = {2307-1737},
  keywords = {poetry discourse, poetic text analysis, programming languages}
}

Let me know in the comments — have you ever tried writing “code poetry”? Or do you know other examples? 👨‍💻📜

Verse Markup Language (VML)

Boris Orekhov — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:02:53 +0000

Verse Markup Language (VML): When Poetry Meets Code

Have you ever tried to make a computer understand a poem? Not just find rhymes, but parse where the author is, where the title is, where the epigraph is, and where the actual verses are? If so, you know how quickly “plain text” becomes a headache.

I’m Boris Orekhov, and I created VML (Verse Markup Language) — a minimalist markup language that turns the chaos of poetic text into a machine-readable structure. And yes, it’s already working on real‑world corpora (e.g., the Bashkir Poetry Corpus with >10,000 poems).

A note on language: The full VML specification is written in Russian. However, given the current state of machine translation (DeepL, GPT-4, etc.), this is hardly a barrier. Anyone can obtain an accurate, readable English version in seconds. The tag names and syntax are language-agnostic anyway — <a>, <&>, <n> work the same in any idiom.

Why not TEI, JSON, or Markdown?

TEI – a beast. It can handle anything, but marking up a single poem feels like writing a new gospel in XML. Impossible for handling for humanists.
JSON – great for machines, but a humanist will close their laptop in horror.
Markdown – fine for documentation, but not for strict metadata markup.

VML is a text format that stays human‑readable and is easy to parse. Its tags are short (<a>, <&>, <n>, <rm>), the hierarchy is strict, and learning it takes 5 minutes.

Minimal example

<a> William Blake
<&> Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

<a> – author (stays active until the next <a>)
<&> – the first line of the poem (incipit). Without it, the document is invalid.

From this you can already extract the author, the title (none here), the list of lines, and even count them.

Adding structure

<a> Emily Dickinson
<rm> Hope is the thing with feathers   <-- epigraph (prose insert)
<&> “Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
<*> And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

<rm> – prose insert (epigraph, dedication, stage direction). Each line gets its own <rm>. Poetry parser skips it.
<*> – start of a stanza. Stanzas are separated by repeated <*>.

Poetry cycles

<nn> Sonnets to the Young Man
<n> Sonnet 1
<&> From fairest creatures we desire increase...
<n> Sonnet 2
<&> When forty winters shall beseige thy brow...
</nn>

<nn> ... </nn> – a cycle. Inside are several poems, each with its own title <n> and incipit <&>.

What if an epigraph appears before an incipit without a title?

Two poems in a row, and the second has an epigraph. How do you avoid attaching the epigraph to the first poem? VML provides <&&> – an explicit start of a new poem before an incipit:

<a> John Keats
<&> A thing of beauty is a joy for ever...
...
<&&>
<rm> Epigraph to “Ode to a Nightingale”
<rm> “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”
<&> My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains...

For the geeks: “ladder” layout

If you’re a verse scholar, you might need explicit “ladder” markup:

For example Mayakovsky:

<&> Я волком бы <l-2> выгрыз <l-3> бюрократизм.

Tools

The repository contains:

Validator (vml_validator.py) – checks syntax, nesting, escaping.
Counter (vml_counter.py) – outputs statistics: authors, poems, lines, cycles.

python3 vml_validator.py poem.vml
python3 vml_counter.py poem.vml

Where is it already used?

Bashkir Poetry Corpus (http://web-corpora.net/bashcorpus/) – more than 10,000 poems marked up in VML. Based on this corpus, a monograph (Orekhov, 2019) and several articles on quantitative verse studies have been published.

Who is it for?

Humanists who want to build their own corpus without learning XML/JSON.
Developers who need to extract metadata from poems for NLP tasks (author, date, metre, stanza structure).
Digital Humanities enthusiasts looking for a simple, open standard.

Biblio

Orekhov, B. V. (2019). Bashkirskiy stikh XX veka. Korpusnoye issledovaniye [Bashkir Verse of the 20th Century: A Corpus Study]. Saint Petersburg: Aleteya. 344 p. ISBN 978-5-907189-29-4. (In Russian)

P.S. What about escaping?

In real poems, sequences like <a> almost never appear as part of the text. But just in case, escaping exists: \<a> will be treated as plain <a> and won’t break the parser.

Discussion in the comments is welcome. Do you use any formats for poetry markup? Would you like to try VML? Feel free to open issues on GitHub – any feedback is valuable.

Boris Orekhov, 2026

Programming as text creation

Boris Orekhov — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 07:45:26 +0000

I am a philologist and I need to write texts: scientific papers, popularization articles. But sometimes I want to write code. I often treat code as natural language texts. Just as sometimes you want to try your hand at a new genre, you want to leave behind and offer the community code in a programming language that is not your primary language.

I used to write a lot in Perl, it was my second language, but now I've thoroughly forgotten it. However, for sentimental reasons I'd like to have Perl code in my github account, so I had to remember it.

I tried using ChatGPT to accomplish the task I wanted, but never got the results I wanted. I had to write code the old fashioned way and work out the rules of the language.

I plan to write some more applications (useful and just beautiful) in different programming languages in the near future and make them available to the public.

Font licensing

Boris Orekhov — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 09:29:00 +0000

A few years ago I created a font.

I would like it to be open and free for distribution. This is unusual because most fonts are paid for. I was faced with the problem of choosing a license for the font. Fonts have their own licenses, and they are not supposed to be free to distribute. It seemed appropriate to me to use a license that included the font as part of the software, because fonts are now electronic and used on websites.

In general, I would like to use the GNU General Public License v3.0 (+ Commercial use, + Distribution, √ License and copyright notice, √ Same license), but I haven't seen such cases, it doesn't seem to be common.

Possible topics for Python podcast

Boris Orekhov — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:12:00 +0000

I taught programming to humanities students for many years. This is also something we can sometimes talk about within the programming community.

What can you focus on in such a conversation?

Here's an outline for a conversation plan:

Why should humanities students learn python? Common problems that are solved by code.
Why Python and not R or Fortran? What libraries are in demand for humanitarians?
What are the differences in learning to develop for humanitarians, what are the challenges faced? Language barrier.
Does GPT work? What do the humanities think about it?
Esoteric programming languages from a humanist's point of view
Poems in programming code
What do natural language and programming language have in common? Python as a foreign language

Scientific problems are not real problems for programmers

Boris Orekhov — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:02:00 +0000

In 2020, a rather famous person wrote to me through one service for sharing scientific papers. This person is a programmer.

First, she asked about the Master's program at our university, whether it was worth going there. We also talked about the website that this person had created. The site is very famous and useful.
Then, as part of my reflections, I suggested thinking about adding some functionality to this site. This functionality would have to be at the backend level, and would require the implementation of free third-party libraries.

This idea seemed unfortunate to my interlocutor. She did not want to implement any third-party code. But the main thing is that I heard a number of insults against me. According to her, I did not understand the subject of the conversation.

To show that I had studied the subject of the conversation, I went to the site and, opening the source code of the page, discovered the use of jQuery there.

In my opinion, this was already an implementation of someone else's library. To this I received an even greater stream of insults.

One of the ways to hurt me, which my interlocutor chose, was to attack my abilities as a programmer. “You are not a real programmer, you just use programming for your small scientific tasks, and you don't understand anything”.

This is true, by the way, I am not a real programmer and I write academic code which is much worse in quality than the one created in the industry.

But the most interesting thing here is the contrast between my “little science tasks” and the apparently big and serious stuff that programming is actually for.