( 2.31.New operators: 'eq', 'ne', 'last', '..' ) ?

[François Pinard]

Stefan Schwarzer <s.schwarzer at ndh.net> writes:

> The only programming languages I (personally) know to pay attention
> to amount of whitespace are Fortran, Assembler and Python ;-) .

For most of the remaining languages, any good programmer has to pay
attention to the amount of whitespace him/herself, because nicely presented
programs are a good thing.  Any serious programmer has to take care anyway.
This being given, compilers should really validate and diagnose wrong or
inconsistent indentation, in my opinion.  It is a pity to see such amounts
of programmer-added redundancy to be thrown away and wasted by compilers.

I believed in the above for years, and unsuccessfully tried to convince the
GNU project to amend their C compiler accordingly.  So, when I re-discovered
Python, not so long ago, it was a real and deep pleasure for me to see this
particular aspect of programming, correct indentation, so well integrated
in the language.

To be honest, I just do not understand the big fuss some people do about
whitespace in Python.  They are all given a very nice gift, and it makes
their misery.  I shudder to think what their sources would look like, if
they really consider that indentation is a curse.  I like the idea that
Python programs have readability on their side from the start, by design.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard