> A quine is a program that outputs its own source code, not a program that outputs itself in binary form. I’d therefore argue though that a “proper” quine should in this case output not the actual ASCII bytes, but the hex code for the bytes.
Punch cards could legitimately be called source code. Those weren’t in hex, but rather in binary (at least the ones I’m remembering).
I think a punch card program that output to the console (or whatever punch card systems used for output, a teletype?) instructions for creating a new set of punch cards containing itself would meet the definition of a quine. The source code is the program itself, the “compilation” is the process of punching new cards, the execution is feeding the cards into the machine, and the output is the source code again.
What is described in the original article is more like feeding a program into the machine that does nothing and declares the fact that the original deck is now in the output bin to be a quine.
> A quine is a program that outputs its own source code, not a program that outputs itself in binary form. I’d therefore argue though that a “proper” quine should in this case output not the actual ASCII bytes, but the hex code for the bytes.
Punch cards could legitimately be called source code. Those weren’t in hex, but rather in binary (at least the ones I’m remembering).