From: Tim Hammerquist <tim@...>
Date: 2002-09-04T15:43:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby aesthetics

Yukihiro Matsumoto graced us by uttering:
[ snippage ]
> I do think the idea of "significant indentation" is
> interesting, but:
> 
>   * for historycal reason, we can't distinguish tabs and spaces
>     at a glance.  this is very bad for "significant indentation".

This is true, and has spawned a whole new religious war in the
comp.lang.python NG, esp. relating to whether to use hart-tabs or
softtabs in Vim.

>   * somehow "significant indentation" brings separation
>     betweeen expression and statement.  I don't like this.  I
>     feel this is a restriction for no reason.  for example, in
>     Python, lambda body must be an expression.  you have to
>     define a named function if you want a function which body
>     contains statements.

I don't like this either, but I thought the sig. indent was a
completely separate mantra from the "no statements in most places
they would be useful" concept.  I don't see why you can't have
sig. indent w/o Python's annoying exclusion of statements from
conditional contexts.

Thoughts?  Not that I want sig. indent for Ruby.  No need to
mess with a good thing.  But if someone were designing a new
language and he/she didn't want it to be as annoying as Python,
what do you think?

Tim Hammerquist
-- 
Perl did not get where it is by ignoring psychological factors.
    -- Larry Wall in <199809031634.JAA26895@wall.org>