tabs do WHAT?

[Tim Peters]

[seanb at home.com]
> Out of curiosity, are there any online copies of these
> usability studies that were so formative to pythone?  Such
> studies might make interesting reading and some people may
> have more trust in the results of a study they could examine
> online.
>
> Failing online access, is there any public access to write-ups
> of these studies?

Agreed it would be interesting!  I don't have any links for you -- I knew
ABC only as a user, but read several papers that came out of the project.
That was over a decade ago, though, and certainly not on the web; the
specific claim about indentation is one I don't recall reading about then,
but is one Guido has mentioned on c.l.py several times since (but he hasn't
bothered to jump into a "whitespace thread" in years -- you'd have to search
hard for that).

The ABC project is no longer active.  Its sponsoring institution still has
*some* info available (http://www.cwi/nl/).  Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens
and Steven Pemberton were ABC's primary designers.  A quick web search on
their names turned up this citation:

    "An Alternative Simple Language and Environment for PC's"
    S. Pemberton, IEEE Software 4(1):56-64 (Jan 1987)

Presumably (a) that contains more info, and (b) is not available online.

Here's a snazzy quote from SP's homepage (http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/):

    We did requirements and task analysis, iterative design,
    and user testing.  You'd almost think programming languages
    were an interface between people and computers.

today's-generation-would-probably-find-3D-rotating-
    metallic-braces-easier-to-grasp<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim