In accordance with our meta agreement, since one candidate received more votes than the others*, we have a new featured language! Throughout February 2021, our Language of the Month, nominated by myself (caird coinheraahing) will be:
Whispers
*: It was a close race between 4 different languages, but it seems that at 00:00 UTC Feb 1st, Whispers was ahead.
What's a Language of the Month?
See the meta post for nominations. In short, during February, those who wish to participate should learn (at least the basics of) Whispers, and use it to solve challenges. Participation is completely optional, but is anticipated to be fun!
Information about Whispers
Whispers is a rather unique programming language in how it executes a program. Rather than running line-by-line or command-by-command, Whispers only executes the last line in the program by default. All other lines are only run when referenced by either the last line, or by a line referenced by the last line (and so on).
Each line in the program is made up of a single builtin, meaning that most complex programs consist of a lot of linked lines and passed values. Most of the builtins are math-centric (especially in the latest version), so it is especially strong at math challenges.
The syntax rules that filter out invalid lines allow it to be very useable in polyglots and related challenges.
Especially with the latest version, Whispers is very powerful, including a built in calculus engine, along with the ability to run and evaluate arbitrary mathematical expressions. Furthermore, it now has support for common sequences, a massive builtin library of functions and a large collection of builtin operators and constants
Finally, the basic nature of the language/syntax could potentially lead to some interesting challenges themed around it.
Resources
- Github repo
- TryItOnline! : version 1 and version 2. repl.it for version 3 (requires a repl.it account to fork)
- Tutorial, up to date to v2
- Chatroom
- Wiki, including the list of commands and a more in depth tutorial
Bounty
Answers in Whispers will be eligible for a bounty of 50 rep if you have not posted an answer in Whispers before. Sorry, but if it's a question that I (caird coinheringaahing) have already answered, I'll only award the bounty to an exceptional answer, since it starts at 100 rep.
Furthermore, there is this deadline-less bounty for proving the Turing-Completeness of the language.