Another brand new language with curly braces and semicolons... emphasizing line ...

Freebytes · on May 22, 2023

What would you suggest instead? Please do not say Python. Using spaces for syntax is madness.

xigoi · on May 22, 2023

You never make use of horizontal spacing when, say, making notes on paper?

gavinhoward · on May 22, 2023

Notes on paper are for humans.

Programming languages are for humans and machines. Machines do better with braces. (I've written lexers for both.)

Also, try to write an automatic formatter for a whitespace-delimited language; if your indentation is wrong, your logic is wrong, whereas with a brace language, if your indentation is wrong, you run a formatter, and it's all golden.

xigoi · on May 23, 2023

A parser is something you write once and then it's done, so it shouldn't be the deciding factor. And parsing indentation-based languages is not that hard, just replace indents and dedents with a special token.

In a brace-based language, if your braces are wrong, your logic is wrong. How is that better? At least a mistake in indentation is much easier for a human to spot.

gavinhoward · on May 23, 2023

Run the formatter, and the brace-based mistake is easy to spot too.

xigoi · on May 23, 2023

So what's the point of having braces if you're going to use indentation anyway?

gavinhoward · on May 23, 2023

To do more things with the source than just compile it.

xigoi · on May 23, 2023

And how do braces and semicolons help you with that?

gavinhoward · on May 23, 2023

Exactly what I mentioned above: source formatting is just one of the things you can do with braces and not significant whitespace. [1]

Also, forget a brace in your program, just one, and the compiler can tell.

Forget one indentation? No dice.

And while braces can break things too, editor settings can make it much easier to break things with significant whitespace. [2] [3]

Also, refactoring. [4]

Editor stuff. [5]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3296782

[2]: https://medium.com/@rwxrob/significant-whitespace-is-still-t...

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24854090

[4]: https://lobste.rs/s/yyuo7f/significant_whitespace_good_bad#c...

[5]: https://lobste.rs/s/yyuo7f/significant_whitespace_good_bad#c...

xigoi · on May 23, 2023

Python does have an auto-formatter [6], so clearly indentation doesn't prevent that.

> Also, forget a brace in your program, just one, and the compiler can tell.

Should we duplicate every character, so the compiler can tell if you leave one out? This is not a radiation-hardened quine [7].

> editor settings can make it much easier to break things with significant whitespace.

Then use an editor which doesn't.

> Selecting all code contained in a brace or a parents is so much easier (in vim the % movement) than if you have to walk lines.

I have a plugin for Neovim that adds indentation-based motions. The implementation is trivial.

[6] https://github.com/psf/black

[7] https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/57257/radiation...