tabs do WHAT?

[Richard Brodie]

"Thomas Hamelryck" <thamelry at vub.ac.be> wrote in message news:86joac$l2s$1 at mach.vub.ac.be...

> BTW, people here seem to have adopted the idea that if you don't like
> a particular feature of a language, you should abandon it (e.g., "You
> don't like indentation? Use Perl!").

Adding features to a language always seems easy but that is the best
reason for not doing so. There is the temptation to make the language
the union of all the desired features. It's all been talked around before,
and Guido has said what his feelings are. In the end, I think you've
either got to respect that decision, or fork the language.

> You can find a very nice description of this process with respect to C++
> in "The Evolution of C++ : Language Design in the Marketplace of Ideas",
> by Jim Waldo (Editor), James Waldo (Editor).

C++ has to be the classic case of a language that evolved rather than
was designed: PDP-11 assembler with OO bits tacked on. If we can
learn something from its evolution, it should be not to do the same
again.

'Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.' - King Lear