Exploring Fractals with a Homegrown Language
Fractals are places where a few lines of code turn into endless landscapes. They look like coastlines, galaxies, shells, and storms at the same time, and you can visit them straight from your browser.
All the images in this article come from a small fractal explorer I built using my own programming language, compiled to WebAssembly and running on the web. You drag to move, scroll to zoom, and watch new structures appear as you go.
A Tiny Gallery of Infinite Places
When I “take” these fractal photographs, I’m basically doing what a photographer does:
I look for an interesting region on the screen.
I zoom in until the shapes fill the frame.
I tweak colors until the structure pops.
Some shots show the big overall shape, with its main body and attached bulbs and spirals. Others are deep zooms along the edges, where smooth areas suddenly break into fine filaments and swirling textures.
What’s Going On Under the Surface
You don’t need to know the math to enjoy the views, but the idea behind them is simple: pick a point, apply a tiny rule to it again and again, and watch what it does over time. Points that stay calm create the solid regions; points that quickly fly off create the bright, detailed edges.
Different rules give different species of fractals. By changing this little recipe, the whole landscape rearranges itself — from the classic Mandelbrot “bug” to delicate Julia shapes and colorful Newton patterns.
Building the Explorer in My Own Language
Instead of using an existing language, I wrote a small one of my own and then used it to build this explorer. It crunches the numbers inside WebAssembly, while a thin layer of JavaScript handles panning, zooming, and drawing pixels on the screen.
Using my own language makes the project feel more like a laboratory than just an app. I can add new kinds of fractals, tweak how the rules work, or experiment with new color schemes right at the language level, then see the results instantly in the browser.
Explore and Capture Your Own Views
If this world of patterns and colors speaks to you, you can open a fractal explorer in your browser, move around the shapes, and zoom into any region that catches your eye. The best discoveries often come from tiny nudges and “wrong” clicks.
If you’re into code, the source of my language and the explorer is available as well, including the compiler pipeline and rendering logic. I’m continuing to evolve it and add new fractal species — and I’d love to see screenshots of the places you find along the way.
Fractal Explorer : https://multilingualprogramming.github.io/fractales/
Source Code : https://github.com/johnsamuelwrites/multilingual
