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0 pointsxigoi2y ago0 comments

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

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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.

xigoiOP2y ago

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.

gavinhoward2y ago

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

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gavinhoward2y ago

Notes on paper are for humans.

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

xigoiOP2y ago

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.

gavinhoward2y ago

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

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse