> > <perl advocacy> > when i was mulling over learning perl or python, one thing that drew me > to python was the strict whitespace rules. the theory being that python > will _always_ look the same. and then Cory pointed out to me that perl > ignores whitespace, so it can be as pretty or as groady as you want. i > don't know about current python, but anything that *forces* me to write > code in a certain way isn't really my thing. > <pythangelism> In Python the indentation has a syntactic meaning, like curly braces and semicolons do in most of the C family of languages. So unless you feel constrained by the need to match braces, or end statements with semicolons it's not _that_ painful.
Most pythonistas use a syntax aware editor (emacs,vim, textpad) and just type in the code as they think it, the big difference is that when they go back to look at what they did earlier, it's much easier to find the spot where things go wrong, and very much easier to see where you've structured the code weakly. Also the fact that a fairly large and active community has made a clear decision on code formatting means that community can survive without having endless code formatting holy wars...;-) </pythangelism> > python does seem to be quite popular, so i may include it anyway, > depending on the "package" size (in k). Python-2.1.1.tgz weighs in at 6056 k http://www.efn.org/~laprice ( Community, Cooperation, Consensus http://www.opn.org ( Openness to serendipity, make mistakes http://www.efn.org/~laprice/poems ( but learn from them.(carpe fructus ludi) http://allie.office.efn.org/phpwiki/index.php?OregonPublicNetworking
