Why not allow empty code blocks?

[BartC]

On 24/07/2016 20:00, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 4:14 AM, BartC <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:

> A skilled craftsman in any field will choose to use quality tools.

Materials (ie. languages) are important too.

> So why do you use
> "dumb editor" as a line of argument, rather than getting a smarter
> editor?

Perhaps because I prefer to use my own languages and I don't have anyone 
writing the specialist tools for me that would be necessary.

> I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who use suboptimal tools and
> expect everything to work for them. Sure, sometimes you're forced to
> use something less than ideal (maybe you're stuck on someone else's
> Windows box and good tools simply aren't there, and you can't go
> installing a ton of stuff just to get started), but then you KNOW
> you're working in bad conditions. You don't make that your normal
> life.

Some of us are used to working with minimalist tools and can be 
extremely productive with them.

But since you used some C, let me give an example of poor design from 
that language (there are plenty; I've written up quite a big collection 
of them).

You might know that type declarations in C, as soon as you go beyond the 
basics, become completely impossible and convoluted. I've never managed 
to get my head around them.

There are utilities such as 'Cdecl' that are used to convert a C 
declaration to English, and vice versa. That's how good a feature they are!

So what would have been a better solution here: to have fixed the 
language, or to have grafted on a simpler type declaration scheme that 
could co-exist with the old one; or to have ignored the problem and 
depended on using external tools?

Or just insisted that everyone learns that arcane aspect of C, despite 
it being unreadable and error-prone.

(My own solution is that I use a home-made language in place of C, which 
has fixed most such problems. So my main 'tool' is a custom-made language.

And for block delimiting, it uses neither tabbed indents or braces!)

-- 
Bartc