allowing braces around suites

[Roel Schroeven]

Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote:

> [Roel Schroeven]:
> 
>>  Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote:
>>  > how long do you have to stare before spotting the bug?
>>  
>>  Just the time needed to read the code.
>>  
>>  >     db.update_name(person)
>>  >     if is_student(person):
>>  >         db.update_courses(person)
>>  >         db.commit()
>>  > only students have their names updated.  I wonder why.
>>  
>>  No offense, but I wonder why you have a problem with this
>>  code. IMO the indentation makes perfectly clear what's happening.
> 
> 
> I don't think it is appropriate that I dump thousands of lines of code
> here to illustrate the problem :-)
> 
> when I provide four lines of code and tell you there's a bug, of
> course you can spot it immediately.

I immediately saw what the code does; at first I didn't know it was the 
bug you were referring to since I don't know what the code is supposed 
to do. Then I read 'only students have their data updated' as 
description of the bug, and only then I knew that the commit was 
incorrectly indented.

>  when it's part of a large system,
> it's a bit harder.  also consider that the db.commit() originally was
> correctly placed by the programmer, and the wrong indentation was
> introduced later by an editing glitch.

In that case, I agree it can be harder. But IMO it gets harder with 
increasing code complexity, whether braces are used or not. I haven't 
yet seen very complex python programs, but I have seen C and C++ code 
with multiple nesting levels, and let me assure that it can sometimes be 
very difficult to spot errors.

-- 
"Codito ergo sum"
Roel Schroeven