--- title: The 3 WORST Programming Languages | daily.dev description: A personal ranking of three notoriously painful esoteric programming languages: Brainfuck (only 8 symbols, no variables), Piet (code written as images with... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The 3 WORST Programming Languages | daily.dev og:description: A personal ranking of three notoriously painful esoteric programming languages: Brainfuck (only 8 symbols, no variables), Piet (code written as images with... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/iTS9NYZcE.png og:image:alt: The 3 WORST Programming Languages og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The 3 WORST Programming Languages **[YouTube](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A personal ranking of three notoriously painful esoteric programming languages: Brainfuck (only 8 symbols, no variables), Piet (code written as images with color-change commands), and Whitespace (code made entirely of invisible whitespace characters). The author shares hands-on frustrations, including spending over 4 hours writing a Fibonacci program in Whitespace. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the Whitespace programming language and why is it so hard to use? Whitespace is an esoteric programming language whose entire syntax consists of spaces, tabs, and newline characters, making the code invisible to the eye. Numbers are written in binary using spaces and tabs. One programmer reported it took an hour and 45 minutes just to get basic input and output working, and over 4 hours to write a full Fibonacci program. _Developers exploring odd corners of programming languages can find more deep dives like this on daily.dev._ ### How does the Piet programming language represent code? Piet represents program code as an abstract picture, where a pointer moves through the image and every color change acts as a command. Because instructions are encoded visually rather than textually, even simple tasks like building a Fibonacci calculator can become extremely time-consuming and confusing to write. _daily.dev surfaces quirky language experiments like Piet for developers curious about unconventional coding paradigms._ ### Why is Brainfuck considered difficult to program in? Brainfuck is difficult because it has only eight symbols total, with no numbers or named variables, just a single pointer that moves through memory. Simple operations like adding two numbers require writing an entire loop, and programmers often need extensive comments just to track what their own code is doing. _Curious developers comparing minimalist and esoteric languages can find similar explorations on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [EsoLang-Bench: Evaluating LLMs via Esoteric Programming Languages](https://daily.dev/posts/esolang-bench-evaluating-llms-via-esoteric-programming-languages-5ruzdvsxd) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Exploring Programming Languages](https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-programming-languages-1lqxkzogv) · Beam Bloggers Webring · 64 upvotes · 8 comments - [Ten Lines Of Code That Changed My World – Pixelambacht](https://daily.dev/posts/ten-lines-of-code-that-changed-my-world-pixelambacht-hustfjyxe) · Lobsters · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [7 Mistakes Beginners Make When Learning Programming](https://daily.dev/posts/7-mistakes-beginners-make-when-learning-programming-oqm5ywthk) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The 3 WORST Programming Languages","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce"},"datePublished":"2026-07-21T07:03:32.917Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T07:15:24.755Z","description":"A personal ranking of three notoriously painful esoteric programming languages: Brainfuck (only 8 symbols, no variables), Piet (code written as images with...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y_zOPiuEdYY/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y_zOPiuEdYY/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"YouTube","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"YouTube","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--W5zMumpP--/f_auto/v1725350181/logos/youtube","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/youtube"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"","timeRequired":"PT1M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"The 3 WORST Programming Languages","description":"A personal ranking of three notoriously painful esoteric programming languages: Brainfuck (only 8 symbols, no variables), Piet (code written as images with...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y_zOPiuEdYY/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-07-21T07:03:32.917Z","duration":"PT1M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/iTS9NYZcE","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/y_zOPiuEdYY"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"YouTube","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/youtube"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The 3 WORST Programming Languages"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-3-worst-programming-languages-its9nyzce#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the Whitespace programming language and why is it so hard to use?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Whitespace is an esoteric programming language whose entire syntax consists of spaces, tabs, and newline characters, making the code invisible to the eye. 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