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I know it's not popular, so it would never make the list. But disappointed nonetheless that Whitespace didn't get scrutinised. That data would have meant something!

I bet you'd really hate the Whitespace programming language

I agree generally with the above. For some background lectures, I would suggest Leonard Susskind's lectures. A highly entertaining lecturer and knows his stuff. But again, the above is true in that the only way to truly understand physics is to do some problems. To combine it with IT, you can try doing simulations of things. Alternatively try your hand at some masters level projects. (eg. these)

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/white...

Nope. Welcome to Whitespace.

Well put. I haven't had the displeasure of working with huge makefiles personally, and I am quite fond of the Lisp language family, but it doesn't make sense to me to put it into a build system, and the tab magic thing is slightly Turing tarpit worthy. Maybe it's time for a classic fork of 3.x?

Syntax is important. Can't communicate without it.
Languages usually imply runtimes, which have important semantics, slowdowns, conventions, environments.

Try to code in whitespace sometime...

Python is readable and readable code is easier to fix.

True and true. But Python's use of semantic whitespace is also very brittle very easy to break, and a huge pain in the ass to fix compared to languages that use braces, or keywords to define 'blocks'.

Furthermore Python's needless attribution of syntactical meaning to whitespace means it's useless for embedding certain languages...
...Like Whitespace.

Today many languages support Unicode source code which can have tons of new spaces of varying width including zero-width and non-breaking-zero-width space. The multitude of new spaces would make indention distinction all the more brittle, but this also means new extensions to Whitespace can provide more rich and full featured embedded language support to most modern programming languages -- Except Python.

Here, I'll post it here to save you time:

503 Service Unavailable

No server is available to handle this request.

Not sure what language that's in.

Have you checked for Whitespace

C may currently have overtaken Java as the most popular language but Whitespace is going to overtake them all!

If you want a hard to read language you should check whitespace language
For something more colorful Piet is the obvious language.

So they are violating the copyright of the Whitespace inventors?

You're going to love this: http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/

Yes, brainfuck is much faster [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck] and it's not bloated with the useless stuff (objects, classes, letters, digits).

Dude, seriously? Are you kidding? Brainfuck is horribly, incredibly bloated. For a real language without all the ridiculous bloat of Brainfuck, there's only one reasonable choice

If only whitespace made as much sense to humans as as it does to computers... Haskell and Python might actually be good languages.

If whitespace made as much sense to humans as as it does to computers... this language would rule the world!

mostly opteron 175 (528 of them at 2.2 GHz with 1056GB RAM totl) and 285 (256 of them at 2.6GHz with 512GB RAM tota), so about 2GB RAM each.

they run Solaris 10 u3

http://icc.dur.ac.uk/icc.php?content=Computing/Cosma

Has anyone tried compiling the silence using whitespace?

But what language do you use to program a blank sheet of paper?

I can guess...

Right. And that sort of arrogant inanity is basically the one flaw that guarantees we have no python over here.

Obviously mixing tabs and spaces is a problem.
Any idiot knows that.

But any idiot also knows that a language that *relies* on intelligent whitespace and where a change that (without proper preperation) will not show up on a printed page or in a large number of text editors can have severe consequences to the code, is
  also an incredibly stupid one.
In a properly designed language, the worst consequence is some slightly inconsistent formatting here and there, easily fixed.

Idiots who embrace Python are so enamoured of the idea of enforcing formatting (nevermind that not all code needs/should be in a One True Style) and of course of the things the language did well in terms of SDK and syntax that they are willing to overlook, obfuscate and ignore this stupidity.

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/
"Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters ..."

Python might not exist in five years, or may become obsolete in five years.

Since the code is freely available, Python will continue to exist one way or the other. That's one of the upsides of open source. Also, Python is closer to bleeding edge than obsolete right now.

The reason I think they specify a language is that otherwise you'll see code switched to whitespace or brainfuck before being submitted to ensure maximum confusion. Remember than most organizations who are required to disclose something do so with the intent of obfuscating that legally required information as much as humanly possible.

The program is obviously written in the Whitespace Language.

They want to implement a database in Whitespace?!?!

...Oh... I guess that's why people keep telling me to RTFS.

This is what computers were designed to do, but instead of just doing a numerical simulation, physicists insist on waving their hand and dismissing the error term like it's not even there, so they can keep using nice pretty exact solutions that... don't agree with reality.

I think these people may disagree with you.........

You'll find most of those simulations are Newtonian. I just checked some of their latest papers, and they all use Newtonian or modified Newtonian (MOND) codes. The code they run is called "GADGET-3" (they also used earlier versions in the past), and according to this high level description, it's Newtonian. Admittedly, it's an impressive simulator, but it seems to concentrate on scale (many particles) and on including many effects like gas interactions, magnetohydrodynamics, etc... but not a relativistic metric.

If you can find even one of the published papers on that site that even mentions to worth 'relativistic', I'd be very interested in reading it. The papers are linked from here, they have links to the full papers on Arxiv.

This is what computers were designed to do, but instead of just doing a numerical simulation, physicists insist on waving their hand and dismissing the error term like it's not even there, so they can keep using nice pretty exact solutions that... don't agree with reality.

I think these people may disagree with you.........

You'll find most of those simulations are Newtonian. I just checked some of their latest papers, and they all use Newtonian or modified Newtonian (MOND) codes. The code they run is called "GADGET-3" (they also used earlier versions in the past), and according to this high level description, it's Newtonian. Admittedly, it's an impressive simulator, but it seems to concentrate on scale (many particles) and on including many effects like gas interactions, magnetohydrodynamics, etc... but not a relativistic metric.

If you can find even one of the published papers on that site that even mentions to worth 'relativistic', I'd be very interested in reading it. The papers are linked from here, they have links to the full papers on Arxiv.

This is what computers were designed to do, but instead of just doing a numerical simulation, physicists insist on waving their hand and dismissing the error term like it's not even there, so they can keep using nice pretty exact solutions that... don't agree with reality.

I think these people may disagree with you.........

Except that I found this general tendency to dismiss higher order error terms to persist through every year I studied physics at University. I didn't drop out in first year, just so you know.

Simplifying equations is not straight forward, you have to be able to show mathematically that the error term is truly insignificant, but this part seems to be glossed over. Students learn a huge array of simplified equations, and are never really exposed to the original thinking and justification behind them, and often don't even realize they're working with techniques that may not work in corner cases. These same students become researchers and write papers about dark matter.

I think you might be missing the difference between physics taught at an undergraduate level, where the emphasis is on understanding the underlying principles of physics which can be taught with simplified equations and what working physicists actually use (which often rely on solving equations numerically).

Have you tried compiling the whitespace =)

I've found that good students tend to do well with any paradigm you introduce them to, while bad students do poorly no matter the paradigm. Few seem to be in the middle. I would argue that the choice of starting language or paradigm is therefore not as important as people think it is.

Settled, so teach them Brainfuck.

Or even the WhiteSpace Language, composed of nothing but tabs, spaces, and line-feeds. Here's an example:

How about this one or this one?

Start test:

\n\t\r\n\t\t \t\t\n \n \t\n\r\n

End of test.

Error in "\n\t\n": Stack is empty, can't return.

I would post "Hello World" written in it here, but the comment thingy refused to accept it: "Filter error: Please use less whitespace."

tm

Whitespace has it beat, as it only allows spaces, tabs and LFs.

A while ago when trolls were abusing Google's "I Feel Lucky" button somebody posted some javscript that would warn you of it. I can't remember who it was, so I can't give credit where it's due, but it also works for the nimp trolls too.

http://smart.dur.ac.uk/andy/stuff/trollbegone.js

INTERCAL is a bit like learning FORTRAN - it's a bit long of tooth - maybe try bf, unlambda, whitespace or my personal favorite, java2k. Any base 11 probabilistic programming language is tops in my book.

Between the plethora of classes and variations, one can't really "know" C++. Well, not like one can "know" C, anyway. My "next" languages have been wxWidgets and ncurses. Eventually I'll make it to Ruby ... someday, and I must also admit an idle curiosity about the D programming language (but that isn't very serious).

If you're ever feeling much more silly than that, though, you can always check out the whitespace language or even LOLCODE.

To add another Wikipedia link to the parent article, vaccination programmes can increase their effectiveness through herd immunity . Even the unvaccinated benefit from a strong uptake in the rest of the community. Hence infants who are as yet too young to start the course of vaccinations are still partially protected from disease by their decreased likelihood of coming into contact with it.

When the MMR humbug first broke in the UK, as a new father I was initially concerned, but quickly became increasingly sceptical after reading some very solid rebuttals (enough to pay to read the relevant papers in the journals). What I did disagree with was the government's stance against separate vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella. I though that the partial take-up by parents in this case would be better than a higher refusal rate if only the combined jab was available, in this I was wrong. Not only are the arguments against combined vaccines clearly spurious, separate vaccinations are also much less effective.

When the DTP vaccine was withdrawn in the UK in the 1970s (over another vaccine scare) and separate vaccines for diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough (pertussis) provided instead, parents failed to take their children for all three, in particular vaccination levels against whooping cough fell to 30%, there were three epidemics and over 100 deaths.

See also Durham Anthropology Journal Volume 13(1)

I honestly don't think it matters. A determined party with all the resources the US Gov't has can find many, many ways to hide dormant coded instructions in plain sight.

"...Whitespace

What is Whitespace?

        Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren't there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax.
What are the advantages of Whitespace?

        Some things which are difficult in other languages are made much easier in Whitespace. For example, literate programming is simply a matter of writing your helpful comments in between program instructions. It's also easy to encrypt your programs. Simply write a misleading comment!

        Whitespace is a particularly useful language for spies. Imagine you have a top secret program that you don't want anyone to see. What do you do? Simply print it out and delete the file, ready to type in at a later date. Nobody will know that your blank piece of paper is actually vital computer code!
What does a typical Whitespace program look like?

        Below is an extract from a program which asks for a name then outputs it (see here for the full script.

Where can I get it?

        There is a prototype Whitespace interpreter available on this site, go to this page to download it. The source code is written in Haskell, or you can get a Linux binary. You can also read a tutorial.
Who is responsible?

        The interpreter was written by someone who shouldn't have stayed up so late, Edwin Brady, and the language was designed by two people who shouldn't have had so much to drink, Edwin Brady and Chris Morris. No doubt Andrew Stribblehill isn't entirely blameless either...."

http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/

Now if 3 drunk guys on a binge can figure somthing like this out, what do you think the NSA has you don't know about.

That's why I only use nil, though I switch to SARTRE or Whitespace in my more philosophical moods. Anyway, you're missing out, I heard there's a bunch of code in the Bible or something.

...and programming in Whitespace.

Well, I suppose .TRUE. Fortran gods would write in some sort of Fortran Ascendant, which would only vaguely resemble our primitive scratchings. Or maybe they'd use Whitespace.

... In Whitespace.

We've had 132-column terminals for a long time, but what I generally tend to jones for is taller, not wider. With a taller screen, you see more code. Then there's the whole issue of saccades, which is why for example newspapers do not run sentences horizontally across the entire page, but rather split the page up into columns. Your eye gets confused when the line gets too long - it's easier to read when there are fewer words on the screen.

That's true, but there is a fundamental difference that most people are ignoring in this discussion so far, between the width of an entire file/screenful of code and the maximum length of any given line.

For example, code in most languages uses indentation to denote some form of block structure. I suggest that a useful metric is the maximum width of one line of code plus a level or two of indentation, because this is what a developer working with the code typically needs to read at once. It doesn't really matter if a block of code being read is all indented by 20 characters at the start of the line, because the eye isn't going back to the start of that space every time it moves to the next line of code.

However, it's often awkward to scroll horizontally in an editor, and alignment/indentation does matter when you're scanning larger blocks of code so you probably wouldn't want to scroll even if it were easy. So, if you want the actual code on any given line no longer than 80 characters, and you allow for, say, half a dozen levels of indentation at four characters each, then that gives you 104 characters altogether. Adjust maximum code length per line, tab size, and maximum typical indentation to match your programming language and house style, and that's a good editor width.

A direct corollary to this is that there is no sensible standard width for code editing, because the needs of different programming languages and the layout preferences of different development teams vary widely. Don't even ask what the best width is if you're programming in Whitespace. :-)

Dammit! It was supposed to go here!

Code, on the other hand, uses whitespace extremely meaningfully...

Then this should be familiar.

First of all, you have to define what base 0 means.
I've always imagined base '0' would mean that you write the necessary number of 0 digits.
The first 4 non-negative integer numbers would then be "", "0", "00", "000" etc., you get it.
And the ideal programming language to handle base-0 numbers is Whitespace:)

Part of the PEAR project's problem was their use of statistics. A classical p-test is guaranteed to eventually reject the null hypothesis (no ESP) if enough data is collected. This is related to the famous Lindley's paradox. A criticism of a particular PEAR analysis on these grounds may be found here from astrostatistician Bill Jefferys. There was a response from the study's author, which I don't have a link to, and a counterresponse here.

Jefferys advocates the Bayesian approach as an alternative to their p-value test (as do I), but even non-Bayesians admit such problems with p-values can happen (they just think the alternatives are worse); see here for some references, and here for some criticisms of and non-Bayesian alternatives to classical accept/reject significance testing. This paper (PDF) is an opinion piece which reviews the issue from a medical research perspective.

wow - you missed a couple of C dialects, most certainly because they extended the letter name with a word

Objective-C and the best programming language in existence, C-Intercal (yeah, yeah - you whitespace lovers can bite me).

I can't believe you don't know this - it's common knowledge that the letter 'P' was skipped because back in the early 80s Wordstar would use control-P to purge your document with no confirmation screen as opposed to Wordperfect's print, so there was an extreme hatred for the letter from people that used Wordstar at work or school and Wordperfect at home (practically everyone not using Cut-N-Paste on an Apple ][, which was, pretty much everyone). It was such a powerful effect that it practically destroyed the Pascal programming language and its .p extensions and nearly killed the Macintosh, which had standardized on Pascal for its operating system. The stigma of the letter has faded, but many old timers would never use a programming language called P.

Checking the source code for backdoors (and removing them) doesn't mean there aren't backdoors in the other software involved. It all comes down to trust:

1. Can you trust the programmer to write bugfree code and not to insert hidden code or well-covered trapdoors?
2. Can you trust the compiler not to insert malicious code independent of the code compiled? (See above paper.)
3. What about the preprocessor, assembler, and linker (or interpreter)?

That's a lot of trust to share.

What I Do:

I run my data through a program that spits out a Whitespace program that generates the original data, then print the program. Nothing beats a paper trail, and there's no need to worry about the ink fading, either.

It looked both worse and better than assembler (for any architecture), but I was told it was wickedly fast for an interpreted language. I suppose that would be because you coded using the tokens directly, instead of the interpreter parsing the tokens out. I had never seen anything like it (CoreWars "assembler" was easier to read), but it left an impression on me. It wasn't until I first found out about Brainfuck that I saw an even more difficult to code in language (with, of course, Whitespace beating them both)...