Re: multi-line expressions
Richard Golding (golding@cello.hpl.hp.com)
Thu, 24 Feb 94 17:13:48 -0800
>> > IMHO, it would be a mistake to turn indentation into the cornerstone
>> > of the language and hinge its success on it. It's important to listen
>> > to customers, in this case developers, and concede that perhaps adding
>> > symbols to bracket blocks is "what the market wants."
>>
>> I think it's one of Python's nicest features, and after working with it
>> for a while, C's braces seem as stupid and unneccesarily verbose to me
>> as Pascal's BEGIN/END seem to a typical C programmer. I also hate to
>> see a good language compromised just to satisfy people's prejudeces (and
>> it really is a predudice -- the people who object have almost
>> universally never tried it).
Well, to add a different viewpoint to this debate -- I have had
problems with the indentation syntax because sometimes I don't want
code written and manipulated by humans; I want code manipulated by
code. One of the strengths of the lisp-like languages is that they
have a syntactic structure that stays out of the way of machine
manipulation. Much of this debate reminds me of the debate
surrounding Lisp macros versus specialised special forms -- and macros
seem to have been a win in the long run. Sad to say, this difficulty
of manipulating code forms has kept me from using Python in general.
-richard