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It's a shame that this hack is necessary; it would have been so easy for the language designer to simply declare that any tab characters used as indentation res
by technomancy 16y ago
It's a shame that this hack is necessary; it would have been so easy for the language designer to simply declare that any tab characters used as indentation result in a syntax error, and poof: a whole class of errors simply become impossible. Don't get me wrong; I will probably reach straight for coffeescript the next time I write code that runs in a browser, but this is the one thing that cools my enthusiasm for it.
- stephth 16y agoIt's a shame that this hack is necessary; it would have been so easy for the language designer to simply declare that any tab characters used as indentation result in a syntax error then someone else would say that it's a shame that TABS aren't supported and that it would have been so easy for the language designer to support them. I'm sorry if it sounds snarky, but I find it arrogant to assume that design decisions are "easy" simply because they look easy to implement.
- technomancy 16y agohttp://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TabsSpacesBoth http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TabsSpacesBoth
- stephth 16y ago... unless, the person has a comic strip to back it up. :)
- technomancy 16y agoAll that to say it seems pretty uncontroversial to say that Python and Make have shown that the problem is not necessarily with meaningful indentation itself, but with the ability to have two expressions that are visually identical with different meanings.