Getting plain New Line and Using Code

I’m new to WP and I hope to be able to use this software to do a blog. I’m in mid-development of customizing my theme, which I may need help with later, however my question is in regard to using a New Line. How can I simply get a new line (n)? I’m using a custom style to show code and it involves using the <code> tag. The style associated with this tag is: white-space:pre; This causes new lines (<br>) to turn into 2 lines, the BR as well as the \n. If i try to just <enter> inside the HTML editor, it thinks it’s just a space and doesn’t create the new line.

Also, It doesn’t make since to me that WP doesn’t automatically convert < and > to & lt; and & gt;. This poses a problem when I start using this blog to post code. Any chance these are issues that can simply be resolved?

See this post: https://blog.briandichiara.com/2007/01/22/interdum/