Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)

On 30/08/2024 17:28, John Ames wrote:

On Fri, 30 Aug 2024 11:38:05 +0200
David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
 

Getting worked up about the way Python blocking works is about as
productive as getting worked up about the way English language
spelling works.  There are countless other more useful ways to spend
your time - and certainly many more enjoyable ways.

 Some people actually enjoy arguing on the Internet, y'know.

Up to a point, I agree.  Where would the internet be without arguments? Cat videos and porn, I suppose.
But sometimes I think discussions could be a little more informative and a little less repetitive ranting.  Occasionally it is also nice to learn something new from the internet.  (I actually learned from this thread that Python 3 is better at checking for mixed tabs and spaces than Python 2 was.)

 

When there are a number of smart, experienced and educated people
involved in the decisions, "obvious stupidities" are extremely
unlikely. That's the point of involving multiple people and gathering
opinions from many in the field.

 You may consider it as "unlikely" as you wish, but the fact is that
literal whitespace has been considered Obviously Stupid in the computer-
programming world for so long that it was the subject of a joke re: JCL
in "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal," published in 1983.
 That's not to say that "considered Obviously Stupid" is the same thing
as "objectively wrong" - but if your argument is that all of this is on
equal footing as Just Opinions, discounting decades of established
opinion across the industry in preference to the opinions of the subset
of Python developers & advocates who believe in literal whitespace as
Unambiguously Good rather gives the lie to that.
 

Python is a hugely popular language, with whitespace for blocks.  C, C++ and Java are hugely poplar languages with braces as delimiters.  I don't see how anyone can get an "established opinion" from that.
But to be fair, the worst case of significant whitespace /was/ obviously stupid - that is makefiles treating tabs and spaces differently.  The original author of make said himself that it was a daft idea, but unfortunately the utility took off in popularity so quickly that it could not be rectified.