From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <481A890F.3080004@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 23:22:55 -0400 From: Robert William Fuller User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20071019) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> References: <3CB4093E-098C-4E6F-B843-7B65E4461D81@mac.com> <7359f0490805011852k64a52a01k1efc1e6aba8b030c@mail.gmail.com> <31D2A9A4-E6AD-4D66-AE2A-6168A3F09D9C@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <31D2A9A4-E6AD-4D66-AE2A-6168A3F09D9C@mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] A new language for Plan 9 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9c7bbeac-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Pietro Gagliardi wrote: >> Put it this way: It's unwise to make program structure depend on >> invisible characters. > There's a language made entirely of said invisible characters, called > Whitespace. It's esoteric, but it works. And Python, which has the same > style, is a phenomenal success. Whether or not indentation works relies > on the programmer. I don't use Python for this very reason. This is probably why Ruby exists. I will not use your language for the same reason. By adopting such draconian white space rules you automatically alienate a large number of programmers. I consider this one of the larger mistakes in programming language design, akin to making the period the most important token in the COBOL language, or using whitespace as a separator in FORTRAN (which incidentally lost NASA a space probe.)