🚀 go-pugleaf

hdavies@kzin.mon.rnb.com (Hugh J.E. Davies) wrote:

> I actually like code that structures blocks by indentation, since it makes writing
> folding editors simple and it lays to rest once and for all the religious wars over
> brace placement. OTOH, I've never even *seen* any Python. (Other than Monty.)
> 
No no no no no.  The reasons why this is a fundamentally flawed idea
are endless: linewrap, tabs, painful to automatically generate code,
virtually impossible to stream-edit code, proportional fonts,
breakable v. non-breakable spaces of differing widths, difficulty of
cut-and-paste, impossible to use yacc-style tools, difficult to read
out over the phone, hard to internationalize, sensitive to identity of
newline character, macros, statements inside expressions, ...  

It is simply not a good idea, whitespace is too volatile to be a
syntactic marker, and counting spaces is too far removed from language
theory.

__Mark
[ markt@harlequin.co.uk | http://www.harlequin.co.uk/ | +44 1223 873829   ]
[ homepage http://www.hal.com/services/juggle/home/markt@harlequin.co.uk/ ]