do people really complain about significant whitespace?

[Alex Martelli]

<gslindstrom at gmail.com> wrote:

> infidel wrote:
> > Where are they-who-hate-us-for-our-whitespace?  Are "they" really that
> > stupid/petty?  Are "they" really out there at all?  "They" almost sound
> > like a mythical caste of tasteless heathens that "we" have invented.
> > It just sounds like so much trivial nitpickery that it's hard to
> > believe it's as common as we've come to believe.
> 
> Some of it may be a reaction from "old-timers" who remember FORTRAN,
> where (if memory serves), code had to start in column 16 and code
> continutations had to be an asterik in column 72 (it's been many years
> since I've done any work in FORTRAN, but you get the idea)

Column 7 was the start, 6 the one for continuation; 1-5 and 73-80 were
ignored by the compiler and could be used for numbering, grouping &c.
Been many years in my case, too, but as I was a mainly-Fortran guru for
several years in my career, it's hard to forget;-).

> Or it may be a reaction from Assembler, which is also quite
> column-centric (is Assembler still taught in schools??).

I never used a column-centric Assembler: even the first assemblers I
used, in the '70s (6502, Z80, a mini called HP1000, VAX/VMS when it was
just out, BAL/370, ...) were all column-indifferent.  The HP1000 did not
even have a punched-card reader: it used punched _tape_ instead (quite a
popular device then, as it came with teletypes typically used as
consoles), so keeping track of columns would have a royal mess:-).

I'm pretty sure you're still _able_ to take SOME Assembler-based course
in most universities, but you need to strive pretty hard for the
purpose... it's definitely not in the "default curriculum", even for
EEs, much less CSs.


Alex