> A code block is not the same as a paragraph. [...]
Right, but for Markdown they're a difference in output despite the input \n\n being just whitespace, and for the final text they have semantic effect despite being just a gap between text. I don't think the argument was whether the particular semantic meaning of paragraphs exactly matches the semantic meaning of code blocks, just that they do have semantic meaning.
> This has nothing to do with the lack of significant white space and everything to do with terrible language design
It's a problem that illustrates how indentation indicates intent, and would be fixed by semantic whitespace. I agree that if a language is going to disregard whitespace, then {...} should be consistently required to partially make up for it.
> I guess that most humans are used to just automatically write and type semantic white space
My experience has been the opposite: looking over huge blocks of completely unindented VBA/MATLAB code written by people with little prior programming knowledge, and being thankful that data science is moving more towards Python. Likely a different crowd than those being actively tutored in C++.
But yeah there are bigger, often harder to automatically fix, issues with beginner code. PyCharm has PEP 8 lints by default for things like variable name conventions, which help but are still commonly ignored.
Right, but for Markdown they're a difference in output despite the input \n\n being just whitespace, and for the final text they have semantic effect despite being just a gap between text. I don't think the argument was whether the particular semantic meaning of paragraphs exactly matches the semantic meaning of code blocks, just that they do have semantic meaning.
> This has nothing to do with the lack of significant white space and everything to do with terrible language design
It's a problem that illustrates how indentation indicates intent, and would be fixed by semantic whitespace. I agree that if a language is going to disregard whitespace, then {...} should be consistently required to partially make up for it.
> I guess that most humans are used to just automatically write and type semantic white space
My experience has been the opposite: looking over huge blocks of completely unindented VBA/MATLAB code written by people with little prior programming knowledge, and being thankful that data science is moving more towards Python. Likely a different crowd than those being actively tutored in C++.
But yeah there are bigger, often harder to automatically fix, issues with beginner code. PyCharm has PEP 8 lints by default for things like variable name conventions, which help but are still commonly ignored.