<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nCome on guys, no one chooses this language for a serious project. There are some actually good benefits to it, and some obvious drawbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advantages<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- Great for learning:<\/strong> You have to build all of this from scratch using a stack and simple jumps, so you begin to see how the programs really work under the hood.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Fun and creative:<\/strong> It’s a good brain puzzle. Feeling like writing a small program is a small victory..<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- A new way to see syntax:<\/strong> It demonstrates how little it takes for a language to work, and that’s quite an eye opener.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Limitations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- Unreadable:<\/strong> Cannot read and comprehend code. Not even a little.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Hard to debug:<\/strong> One missing space or a tab your editor didn’t notice and you’re left with no idea what went wrong.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Not practical:<\/strong> No true library support, it’s too slow to write anything useful. Real projects are out of the question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>Is Whitespace a Good Language for Learning Programming Concepts?<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIn a nutshell, it’s yes, but not as a first language. If you are a novice programmer, begin with a language such as Python. If you have white space just before you learn, you will just get frustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once you understand the fundamentals though, it’s a cool way to check out under the hood. You are not given a variables or loops to work with. Pushes values onto a stack, pops them off and uses labels and jumps to construct your own loops. Well, it’s pretty much like assembling but you get a feel for low-level thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The difficulty is debugging. If you click on the wrong tab, you’ll end up only seeing the invisible characters. So don’t use it as a learning path, it’s a fun side project, just for the brain to stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThat’s the short version of whitespace programming language. It’s weird, a bit goofy and, come to think of it, sort of fun when you master it. Now you’ve learned how it works, what its features are, and how to write a Hello World with spaces, tabs and line breaks only.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you intend to use it in your job? Probably not. Playing with whitespace is a good way to work your brain, and understand the essence of code. Use an interpreter to do an example of Hello World and see if you can make some changes to it yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if you find yourself in a coding dilemma, or just need more programming guides, look at the other resources on Statanalytica. We’re here to help!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>FAQs<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
<\/span>1. Is Whitespace a real programming language?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n
Yes, it is it and it is working! It was designed to be a joke in 2003, but programs can be written and executed in it by using an interpreter.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/span>2. Is Whitespace Turing complete?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n
Yes, it is. Although it is composed of only spaces, tabs, and line breaks, it is capable of calculating anything that a normal language can. Just requires more work.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/span>3. How do I run Whitespace code?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n
An interpreter is required. You can copy and paste it into an online one such as tio.run or use a Python, C or JavaScript version on your own computer.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/span>4. Who created Whitespace?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n
It is developed by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris, from the University of Durham. It was their April Fools’ Day release on April 1, 2003.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you ever opened a code file and wondered if it was empty? In the whitespace programming language, that is exactly what it’s all about. There is a code there but you’re not seeing it. All instructions consist of spaces, tabs and line breaks, and any other text is ignored and considered a comment. Weird, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":39857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[6638,6641,6637,6639,6642,6640,6643],"class_list":["post-39854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-programming","tag-whitespace-programming-language-code","tag-whitespace-programming-language-code-example","tag-whitespace-programming-language-description","tag-whitespace-programming-language-example","tag-whitespace-programming-language-features","tag-whitespace-programming-language-hello-world","tag-whitespace-programming-language-interpreter"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39854"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39858,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39854\/revisions\/39858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/statanalytica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}