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help explaining rationale for indentation

bushi bushi at spiritone.com
Wed Aug 23 02:50:33 EDT 2000 
Well, having fought the 'brace wars' for years, I find just being able to
indent as the marker for grouped code very refreshing. Using indentation has
been a standard practice in my programming for some time.   I can't tell you
how many hours I've spent trying to track down a dropped brace or parenthesis
especially when the indented code looked just fine.  Granted, I'm still very
new to Python but this is one feature that will surely make me a true
believer.


Rainer Deyke wrote:

> "Grant Griffin" <g2 at seebelow.org> wrote in message
> news:39A2EA36.8DC7746 at seebelow.org...
> > If we all lived in a programming world where indentation was the norm
> > (BTW, why hasn't anybody ever offered a braceless version of C/C++), I
> > think braces would be a *VERY* tough sell.  People would say, "Why do we
> > need that?--all it does is clutter our code and lead to multiple ways of
> > writing the same thing."
>
> One potential advantage of braces (or analogous syntactical elements) is
> that they allow a higher degree of structural flexibility.  For example, it
> might be possible to embed statements in expressions (not just the other way
> around) in a language that uses them.  I personally think it would be nice
> if Python did not need separate 'def's and 'lambda's.  Imagine the
> following, where 'function' is a hypothetical new keyword:
>
> map(something, function(x) { print x; })
>
> In pragmatic everyday programming, however, I prefer the brace-less Python
> style.
>
> --
> Rainer Deyke (root at rainerdeyke.com)
> Shareware computer games           -           http://rainerdeyke.com
> "In ihren Reihen zu stehen heisst unter Feinden zu kaempfen" - Abigor
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