We're really wasting time here (I'm pretty sure that the core team isn't 
considering the possibility), but:

> You could try to prevent this is Swift by banning the use of either tabs or 
> spaces in indentation. But this would put you in the middle of a holy war 
> [...]

Go does just that, with great profit.

(gofmt turns all indentation into tabs, although I would argue that a better 
approach is to ban tabs and only ever allow spaces)

> Critics of [braces] tend to focus on the fact that they don't express 
> anything not already expressed by indentation. But as I've explained here, 
> that's not quite true. They provide enough context to text editors to 
> automatically format your code for you. Without them, text editors cannot 
> perform certain formatting operations.


Your whole point is that indentation sometimes gets lost on copy/paste, and 
braces don't. But it's a strange argument. Why would you use an editor or email 
program that routinely loses your data (indentation in this case)? Why would 
you copy your code from a strange web page whose author didn't even bother to 
format it correctly?

It sounds like you're not using per-line copy/paste features in your editor, 
and you need to change your editor or editing habits.

But I take the resulting broader point: indentation-based editing skills are a 
bit harder to master.

> Python on the other hand, is vulnerable to this kind of bug due to 
> unintentional outdenting.

This is actually true. I've experienced this in Python a few times. Second 
valid point, I suppose, although it has never been a problem to catch it in 
practice.

A.

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