Python Rocks!

[Tim Peters]

To tye4's bold rhetorical ploy:

>> There is not single programming language that forces
>> such a bizarre indentation rule.

William Tanksley makes a futile rejoinder:

> Yes, there is -- Python.

Futile because, alas, it now appears open to question whether Python really
is a "programming language" <wink>.

AFAIK, the first programming language to use indentation to denote block
structure was Landin's ISWIM (If You See What I Mean).  That was about 30(!)
years ago.  It was very influential at the time, although ISWIM was a
functional language and so outside "the mainstream".  Its influence persists
in modern functional languages, which *still* usually use indentation to
denote block structure.  For example, look up Haskell.  That also has an
optional notion of explicit block closers (in fact, the all-whitespace form
is defined as syntactic sugar for the explicit form), but it's *so* optional
<wink> that I don't recall ever seeing a Haskell program use explicit block
markers (except in the language reference manual).

Python got its treatment of whitespace from ABC, definitely not a functional
language.  I don't know whether ABC's designers were influenced by the
indentation tradition in the functional world, or thought of that on their
own.

In a third line of development <wink>, a friend designed a turtle graphics
language to help his son learn how to program (LogoMation; see

http://www.magicsquare.com/LM2/

).  He was not a functional language fan, nor had he used Python; his
favorite language appeared to be Prolog.  Simply by watching what his son
got confused by, he apparently hit upon the idea of indentation == block
structure on his own, and that's what LogoMation does.  Its "industrial
strength" successor L3 (http://www.magicsquare.com/L3/ -- impressive web
technology) also uses this scheme.

So, programming language or not, Python isn't the first or the only, by
decades or by a long shot.

although-it-may-be-the-last-ly y'rs  - tim