From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <7359f0490805011852k64a52a01k1efc1e6aba8b030c@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri,  2 May 2008 11:52:49 +1000
From: "Rob Pike" <robpike@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@9fans.net>
In-Reply-To: <3CB4093E-098C-4E6F-B843-7B65E4461D81@mac.com>
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References: <3CB4093E-098C-4E6F-B843-7B65E4461D81@mac.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] A new language for Plan 9
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 9c5ea42a-ead3-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

Indentation by white space is a very bad idea in my experience.
Superficially attractive but ultimately very dangerous. I once spent a
couple of days tracking down a bug caused by a source-to-source code
tool that broke a major program because the code it was injecting into
had indented one more space, causing the injecting code to break the
control flow. It was nearly impossible to track down.

I have lots of other examples of lesser disasters. As code grows,
white space indentation becomes ever more problematic. It's a
maintenance disaster.

Put it this way: It's unwise to make program structure depend on
invisible characters.

-rob