From: Peter Hickman <peterhi@...>
Date: 2001-10-25T06:12:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23228] Re: Bruce Eckel's opinion of Ruby

"Emiliano" <emile@iris-advies.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.21-maildir.0110240654070.4934-100000@cactus.intern.iris-advi
es.com...
> Sean Russell wrote:
> > The main difference is that, with Python, Guido V.R. is determining how
all
> > of you are going to style your source.  I'd rather have local control
over
> > that sort of thing.
>
> While I agree with you, I have to ask: why? I feel the same way yet I
> can't shake the feeling we're being childish for holding on to
> something as insignificant to a particular coding style while we both
> acknowledge that coding standards are good.

I'm not sure that this is what is happening in Python. Python picked up the
program structuring from a language called ABC. This structuring was use in
ABC to trim down the syntactic sugar and included an interactive editor.
This meant that as you typed the code in such as IF the THEN would appear
after your cursor and your cursor would jump over the THEN once the
conditional part as completed.

Python has taken this structure over sugar approach but you don't
necessarily have the interactive editor that came with the ABC environment.

If I recall that was what ABC was all about, an experimental language to
explore this concept. I seem to recall a reference to ABC in some Python
book when discussing the code structure of the language.

Its not quite GVR being a pretty print freak but him buying into that
particular ABC feature. I seem to recall that maybe some other ABC features
have also crept out.