Suggestion for a "data" object syntax

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 7:15 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 5:25 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 10:52 PM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right? Your issues with tabs aside, I think it is impossible to ignore the
>>> the readability improvement. Not even speaking of how
>>> many commas and bracket you need to type in the first case.
>>
>> That's incredibly subjective. Or else straight-up wrong, I'm not sure which.
>
> Just admit it, you try to troll me (or just pretend, I don't know).

No, I am not trolling you.

> Have you ever seen tables with commas left in there?

It's called CSV.

> I've never seen in my whole life. And you should understand why.
>
> Have you ever seen a website with sparse menu items or 'cloud' tags
> with commas attached?
> Have you ever heard someone claim that writing a 2d matrix down in a
> single line is better that present it as a table?
>
> So what you find _incredibly_ subjective here?

Neither of those examples is program code. You are asking for a
syntactic change to a *programming language*. Everything you've said
is fine for a non-code format. Nothing is applicable to a programming
language.

>> Why should this be a language feature? Why not just create a data file
>> and then load it, or use a triple quoted string and write your own
>> parser? What's the advantage of making this language syntax?
>
> I am not sure what happens if I make another argument -
> if it feels so easy for you to deny the obvious improvements (which
> also supported by whole worlds' typography experience) then you can
> just as easy deny pretty everything. How would we build any conversation
> then?

Good question. You're clearly not interested in doing things the
existing (and easy) way, so there's no point debating this.
Fortunately for the rest of us, status quo wins a stalemate.

ChrisA