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A language that does not derive information from whitespace, doesn't mean the language is written without whitespace. Java, Go, Javascript, Rust, etc are all re

A language that does not derive information from whitespace, doesn't mean the language is written without whitespace. Java, Go, Javascript, Rust, etc are all regularly written with whitespace, and have tools to enforce such formatting, but they don't derive information from it. Also, Python has existed for decades and still there is little further adoption of indentation-sensitivity. It doesn't seem like a wave of indentation-sensitive languages will be coming any time soon.

breck 4y ago
> Java, Go, Javascript, Rust, etc are all regularly written with whitespace, and have tools to enforce such formatting, but they don't derive information from it. Ah you reminded me. A curious phenomenon I've observed with Prettier in JS and fmt in Go is languages are moving to standardized whitespace, but as you said, not yet deriving information from it. I don't know enough about Java or Rust but I suspect they probably both have adopted a Prettier/fmt like convention where all code is formatted on save. So it seems like we are moving to a world where it will be a simple flip of a switch to then start having popular languages extract meaning from the whitespace. > Also, Python has existed for decades and still there is little further adoption of indentation-sensitivity. It doesn't seem like a wave of indentation-sensitive languages will be coming any time soon. I think it's coming big time this year. I think our Scroll (https://scroll.pub/ https://scroll.pub/) will catch fire and be the go to language instead of Markdown by the end of the year. Then with the increasing success of TreeBase (powering PLDB and others) we will start to see JSON fall for config formats and document storage databases. A lot more will happen to, data vis will be a big one, but those 2 I'm reasonably certain of happening in 2023.
- tikkabhuna 4y ago
  > Ah you reminded me. A curious phenomenon I've observed with Prettier in JS and fmt in Go is languages are moving to standardized whitespace, but as you said, not yet deriving information from it. I don't know enough about Java or Rust but I suspect they probably both have adopted a Prettier/fmt like convention where all code is formatted on save. So it seems like we are moving to a world where it will be a simple flip of a switch to then start having popular languages extract meaning from the whitespace. But why would I want to extract meaning from whitespace if I have all the information I need from other mechanisms (eg. braces, brackets, keywords)?
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    You got this the wrong way: You can then leave out the redundant information. As (I strongly hope) you won't leave out the formatting and start to write everything on a single line, the obvious thing to do than is to leave out the superfluous block delimiters.

breck 4y ago

> Java, Go, Javascript, Rust, etc are all regularly written with whitespace, and have tools to enforce such formatting, but they don't derive information from it. Ah you reminded me. A curious phenomenon I've observed with Prettier in JS and fmt in Go is languages are moving to standardized whitespace, but as you said, not yet deriving information from it. I don't know enough about Java or Rust but I suspect they probably both have adopted a Prettier/fmt like convention where all code is formatted on save. So it seems like we are moving to a world where it will be a simple flip of a switch to then start having popular languages extract meaning from the whitespace. > Also, Python has existed for decades and still there is little further adoption of indentation-sensitivity. It doesn't seem like a wave of indentation-sensitive languages will be coming any time soon. I think it's coming big time this year. I think our Scroll (https://scroll.pub/ https://scroll.pub/) will catch fire and be the go to language instead of Markdown by the end of the year. Then with the increasing success of TreeBase (powering PLDB and others) we will start to see JSON fall for config formats and document storage databases. A lot more will happen to, data vis will be a big one, but those 2 I'm reasonably certain of happening in 2023.

tikkabhuna 4y ago
> Ah you reminded me. A curious phenomenon I've observed with Prettier in JS and fmt in Go is languages are moving to standardized whitespace, but as you said, not yet deriving information from it. I don't know enough about Java or Rust but I suspect they probably both have adopted a Prettier/fmt like convention where all code is formatted on save. So it seems like we are moving to a world where it will be a simple flip of a switch to then start having popular languages extract meaning from the whitespace. But why would I want to extract meaning from whitespace if I have all the information I need from other mechanisms (eg. braces, brackets, keywords)?
- still_grokking 4y ago
  You got this the wrong way: You can then leave out the redundant information. As (I strongly hope) you won't leave out the formatting and start to write everything on a single line, the obvious thing to do than is to leave out the superfluous block delimiters.