Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to CFRS[] Community Demos: Patterns with turtle graphics using 6 commands
Hello HN! Back in 2023, I introduced CFRS[], a minimalist drawing language with turtle graphics, featuring just six simple commands, through a "Show HN" post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37956065). Since then, I've received a number of creative patterns and animations created using this tiny, esoteric language by the small and friendly community that has since formed around it. In this post, I intend to share some of these interesting creations with everyone to highlight the ingenuity of their creators. If you create an interesting demo using this language, please…
CFRS[] is a minimalist drawing language that uses just six commands to create turtle graphics patterns and animations. Designed for creative experimentation, it enables users to generate geometric designs through a… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1CV
2023 · susam.net · its alternatives →
- 2
An extremely minimal drawing language consisting of only 6 simple commands: C, F, R, S, [, and ]. - susam/cfrs
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
I'm enthralled with using pen plotters to make generative art. Last August at SIGGRAPH, I built an interactive experience for others to see how code can be used to make visual art. The linked blog post is my trials and tribulations of linking a MIDI controller to one of these algorithms and sending its output to a plotter, so that people may witness the end-to-end experience.
2024 · lostpixels.io · its alternatives →
- 4
Creating high-quality scientific figures can be time-consuming and challenging, even though sketching ideas on paper is relatively easy. Furthermore, recreating existing figures that are not stored in formats preserving semantic information is equally complex. To tackle this problem, we introduce DeTikZify, a novel multimodal language model that automatically synthesizes scientific figures as semantics-preserving TikZ graphics programs based on sketches and existing figures. We also introduce a Monte Carlo Tree Search-based inference algorithm that enables DeTikZify to iteratively refine its…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
See animations created by me using Trangram: https://www.trangram.com/showcase I started working on Trangram 7 years ago with a simple idea: a free browser-based vector editor that combines illustration and animation in one place. The goal is to make creating vector graphics and animations as simple as opening a browser. There's nothing to install, no account required, and projects are saved automatically in your browser, so nothing is uploaded to a server. I use Trangram every day for my own illustrations (and occasionally animations). One of the most rewarding parts of…
2024 · trangram.com · its alternatives →
- 6
A minimalist three-dimensional coding environment. Control 8x8x8 dots with a single JavaScript function.
2021 · doersino.github.io · its alternatives →
- 7TA
2018 · turtle.audio · its alternatives →
- 8
During the hype of llama.ttf months ago, I was speculating the potential of WASM shaper for even crazier purpose, one that fitter to a font shaper's duty -- to synthesize font at runtime. This project as proof-of-concept implements a synthesizer that generates and rasterizes handwriting-style font, backed by a super-lightweight RNN model (~14MiB).
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
MagicPattern▲443Create magical geometric patterns and many other graphics...
2020 · magicpattern.design · its alternatives →
- 10
Turtle Graphics for p5.js / JavaScript. Contribute to CodeGuppyPrograms/TurtleGFX development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Learn to code with turtleSpaces — a free Logo programming environment with 3D turtle graphics. Create art, games and animations right in your browser. A great next step after Scratch.
2024 · turtlespaces.org · its alternatives →
- 12CT
Happy New Year! Here's a small turtle graphics game I made for my kids, that I want to share. You write the "DNA" of the turtle, and watch what happens. Any comments or suggestions appreciated!
Jan 2026 · michae2.github.io · its alternatives →
- 13
I was fascinated reading through another recent HN submission about a highly efficient implementation of A* in Lisp, which got me thinking about how I could do something similar in Python. However, these kinds of pathfinding algorithms really need complex terrain/mazes with interesting obstructions to showcase what they can do and how they work. So, I started thinking about how I could generate cool and diverse random "mazes" (they aren't really mazes, but I'm not sure what the best term is). I got a bit carried away thinking of lots of different cool ways to generate these mazes, such…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hi There, Erlang-RED has been my project for the last couple of months and I would love to get some feedback from the HN community. The idea is to take advantage of Erlangs message passing and low overhead processes to have true concurrency in Node-RED flows. Plus also to bring low-code visual flow-based programming to Erlang.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Sketch2scheme▲208Convert hand-drawn diagrams into digital schemes
2024 · sketch2scheme.com · its alternatives →
- 16
The latest 3Blue1Brown video [1] about the M. C. Escher print gallery effect inspired me to re-implement the effect as WebGL fragment shader on my own. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxFjLJ3rVY
Apr 2026 · static.laszlokorte.de · its alternatives →
- 17
🧜♀️ RESTful rendering pipeline for generating sequence and UML diagrams using Mermaid for Markdown docs (Diagrams as a Service) - Schachte/Mermrender
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Hey HN, I want to share a personal project: I made a tiny pen-plotted book for my wife. I did everything myself—drawings (with some help from Midjourney), plotting, cutting, and binding. I even used a 3D printer to make a helper tool. It's absolutely over-engineered, but I enjoyed it a lot. Multi-disciplinary projects, especially those with a physical output, are a lot of fun for me. The post covers the process in detail, but if you're interested in anything specific, let me know. Cheers!
2025 · muffinman.io · its alternatives →
- 19
- 20MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 21
Draw Lindenmayer Systems with Common LISP! -- Trabajo para [7531] Teoría del Lenguaje (FIUBA) - FdelMazo/cl-aristid
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22AC
a collection of recursive css specimens
2018 · recurss.github.io · its alternatives →
- 23BI
Hello HN, Recently an amazingly beautiful explainer was shared on HN: https://explainers.blog/posts/why-is-the-sky-blue/ I loved it so much that I wished more topics were explained that way. So, I decided to stress-test today's frontier models (Opus 4.6 in Claude Code) to generate similar explainer on any given topic WITH (almost) one shot and minimal nudging. I'm launching with four topics: Fourier transformation, scaling laws in bio, cellular automata and LLMs. I would let you be the judge, but I'm quite liking them. Some things I learned: - Prompting CC to test…
Feb 2026 · paraschopra.github.io · its alternatives →
- 24BB
I made a Brainfuck interpreter ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) with additional commands for turtle graphics. Check it out: https://czterycztery.pl/programy/turtlefreeze/
Jun 2026 · czterycztery.pl · its alternatives →
Also compare
- CFR[]: Very minimal drawing language with 5 commands: C, F, R, [, ] alternatives
- CFRS[] – Minimalist turtle graphics with 6 commands: C, F, R, S, [, ] alternatives
- I built an interactive plotter art exhibit for SIGGRAPH alternatives
- Synthesize TikZ Graphics Programs for Scientific Figures and Sketches alternatives
- I made a free animator. Think Adobe Illustrator but for animation alternatives
- Minimal 3D creative coding tool – control 8×8×8 dots with JavaScript alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →