On Aug 12, 1:34 am, Seebs <usenet-nos...@seebs.net> wrote: > > And part of this really is personal taste. I *LIKE* having a matching outdent > for everything. I like to look at code and see > blah > blah > blah > blah > blah > > because then I know it's balanced. If one of them is missing, *something is > wrong*.
What is with you guys and this need to have your hand held to read code. Out-dents are noise and nothing more. When you're driving on a two lane highway that becomes one lane, would you forget to merge (OUTDENT) simply because the "merge sign" was missing? If you did then i would say you need to keep your eyes on the road (CODE) instead of looking for signs on the side of the road. In other words; you need to start acting like an intelligent agent instead of a zombie. > In other language communities, when I find things about the language > troublesome, I usually find people offering suggestions for ways to improve > things, or workarounds, or acknowledging that, yes, that can be annoying. > But for some reason, in this one, that's apparently against a local taboo. > So instead of acknowledging that it is conceivably possible for people to > prefer different things, people say things like "oh, once you've done it a > bit you'll realize how much better it is and then you'll love it". > Condescending, smug, and, at least so far, *totally untrue* for me. Well for indention there is no alternatives. There is either indent/ dendent, or suffer the syntax error. > I am also weirded out by the claim that a Python which used braces would no > longer be Python in any way, shape, or form. If you were to make a C > derivative which used indentation instead of braces (this should be trivial > to do with a preprocessor), I can't imagine C programmers claiming it's > "not C". Of course it's C; it has the C type system, the C operators, the > C promotion rules, C linkage and scope and so on... That's C. It's just a C > variant which tweaks the punctuation. Hmm, Python's exclusive use of indent/dedent for denoting blocks is rather unique in a world of braces (barring a few other less known languages). Removing that feature and replacing it with braces (or tags or whatever) would change the language significantly! Likewise allowing a directive like "use braces = True" would also be detrimental to our code bases. A language must always strive to remove ambiguities and multiplicity. Having more than one way to mark blocks is insanity. You never want to induce more overhead than necessary because such things are detrimental to work flow and language evolution. > If Python with braces wouldn't be Python at all, why on earth does the > language even exist? If all you want is indentation-which-matters, it's > super easy to write a preprocessor for ANY language to do that, and you could > have every last positive feature, benefit, or valuable trait of Python by > doing that to any other language. This statement leads me to believe you have very little experience with the Python language. Python has many wonderful attributes and design philosophies. Significant indentation is just ONE of many. > Unless, of course, there are *other* things that are significant > about Python. In which case, a language which preserved all of > those, but used braces, would still be a kind of Python after all. I don't understand this need for braces. You yearn so badly to be dominated by them. Is this a psychological disorder, a Helsinki syndrome that you cannot shake? There is life after braces my friend, and the future is bright! > Long story short: I think the dismissiveness and hostility I've seen from > people in the Python community towards people who, for *whatever* reason, > find the indentation-flow-control thing annoying, is not really helping the > Python community win converts. As much as we love people getting on board we are not about to sacrifice our strong beliefs in clean source code just so you and other hardwired C programmers will come along. Indentation is at the very heart of Pythons philosophy. A philosophy that breaks free from decades old language design build on the detrimental ideals of multi- stylism. Good languages do not care about your singularly instinctual emotion needs for bondage, no, they care about productivity and readability from a community perspective. PS: I will admit that a few of our community members can be rather acerbic at times. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
