Whitespace as syntax (was Re: Python Rocks!)

[Fredrik Lundh]

Thomas Hamelryck <thamelry at vub.ac.be> wrote:
> I am in exactly the same position. It was a serious design error.
> I wonder how the CP4A people are going to explain to complete
> computer illiterates that a python program can contain errors that
> are _not even visible_ when you look at the code.

have you read the CP4E paper?  did you understand it?

the people who are going to use CP4E environments won't
have that problem.  tabs and spaces are a text file encoding
issue, so why the heck do you use tools that forces you to
deal with text file encoding issues?  the CP4E folks won't.

(if you bother to read the CP4E paper, you'll find that
automagic whitespace handling is only a small part of
what you can do in an intelligent environment -- how
about automatic syntax checking, semantic analysis,
data-flow/type safety analysis, support for refactoring,
alternate views of the source code, etc, etc.).

and btw, if CP4E (or any other of all current attempts to
create development environments) turns out to be a success,
do you really expect companies to keep paying programmers
who refuse to use modern tools?  or at least pay them what
they're used to?

http://library.northernlight.com/PN20000113240000125.html

</F>