A modest indentation proposal

[Jeff Shannon]

Erann Gat wrote:

> It turns out that what made the bosses unhappy about Lisp was not the
> syntax but the fact that no one uses it.  And before you protest and tell
> me that it's not true that no one uses Lisp, yes, I *know* it's not true.
> I also know that indentation is not much of a problem in practice.

Well, you could tell your bosses that the folks at Lawrence Livermore (among other
places) have been using Python for years (or so all the Python literature tells
us), and don't seem to have a problem with indentation.  I understand that NASA has
some different constraints than LL would, however, I can't see how the indentation
"issue" would be more harmful in one case than the other.  And LL, being another
big gov't/scientific endeavor, should have some similarity...

It does sound to me (as someone else has more-or-less pointed out) that your bosses
may simply be rationalizing.  It's not that indentation is seen as a problem, it's
that Python (or change in general?) is seen as a problem and they're finding
excuses to avoid it.  If that is the case, then your only way to convince them
would be to demonstrate (as Laura Creighton suggests) just how much more effective
you can be using Python.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International