3 ms·

By requiring parenthesis, indentation becomes so much simpler, the programmer doesn't even have to do it. It's done automagically.

• eru 16y ago
  It's done automagically for me in Python and Haskell, too. Instead of hitting the paren keys in Emacs, I just hit tab to cycle through the possibilities. Because the Lisps have such a canonical way to indent them, in practise it feels very similar to significant whitespace with a funny input method.
  • burgerbrain 16y ago
    "automagically", "I just hit tab" You and Understanding are not exactly on speaking terms, are you?
    • eru 16y ago
      Normally, hitting tab just insert another \t wherever your cursor happens to be. Hitting tab in haskell-mode or python-mode just cycles through the two or three (or sometimes one) possibility for indentation for the current line. That's automagically enough for me.