On Jan 2, 2008 2:57 PM, Gabriel Sechan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > ---------------------------------------- > > Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 14:25:17 -0800 > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: Introducing Cobra > > > > SJS wrote: > >> Except that it *doesn't* improve readability. > >> > >> The eye *believes* whitespace, but it's also not very good at it. It's > >> okay at determining that yeah, verily, there *is* whitespace, but it's > >> not very good at determining how much. For very small programs, that's > >> okay; but these languages are no longer being used solely for small > >> programs. > >> > > If you honestly believed that, you shouldn't indent your code. In fact, > > as an experiment, I encourage you to compare your code before and after > > such a transformation. I assure you that the vast majority of the > > population will be more quickly able to determine the location of a > > start and end block when the block is properly indented with whitespace. > > > > The problem is that its much easier to get whitespace wrong than it is to get > braces wrong. For example- one of my most frequent refactors is changing > the nesting of a chunk of code- either moving it into a loop, out of a loop, > or into a new function. If you use braces, the code will work, but may be > indented in an ugly matter. If you do it with whitespace, it will be broken. > > Now, your answer is that you need to fix this. I agree. Buyt while fixing > it, you probably aren't only reindenting it- you may be changing variable > names, moving sub-blocks of it around, etc. Or you may get a visitor and > asked to look at something else in the middle of it. THe end result is that > its very easy to forget to indent a line or 2 properly while doing this. If > you have braces, the code still works and you have a visual cue as to where > the indentation needs to be fixed. If all you had is whitespace- you're > screwed. You'll figure it out when you find the bug it causes. >
But I didn't actually experience this problem with Python and I used to do *a lot* of Python. In other words, I didn't find it hard to change the indent level of my code as I restructured it. I guess that's the key for me. People keep raising objections about indentation-for-blocks that my experience comes back with "not a problem", "didn't happen" or "maybe once a year". Since we're doing cute sigs and such: I-can't-pretend-all-these-bad-things-plagued-me-when-they-didn't-ly-yours, -Chuck -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
