From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2002-09-08T13:46:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

On Sun, 8 Sep 2002 12:50:25 +0900, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
I wrote, paraphrasing something from the /. Larry Wall interview:
>> (as Larry said, a paragraph should have a beginning, a middle,
>> and an end -- so should blocks).
> An interesting comment, since a paragraph doesn't have a specific
> end token, but is delimited only by formatting. :)

This is true, but only to a degree. If one is using block format
(modified or otherwise), then it is more proper to say that a
paragraph has no beginning token, but it has a clear end token
(typically a bit of extra space between paragraphs, along with a
ragged edge final line). If one is using "traditional" format, then
it is proper to say that a paragraph doesn't have an ending mark,
but does have a beginning mark (the indentation of the first line).

However, what Larry was referring to is that in good analytical
writing, one writes paragraphs such that there is a beginning to the
argument, the argument itself, and a close to the argument addressed
by the paragraph. I personally think that Ruby's approach (which is
mildly reminiscent of Pascal and Ada on this matter) is cleaner than
either Python's (which is reminiscent of Fortran and COBOL) or
Perl's (which is also that of C/C++/Java/etc.) in that the block is
cleanly delineated by meaningful tokens instead of symbols or
spaces.

def fun(foo)
    ...
end

to me seems to be much cleaner than

fun(foo):
    ...

or

sub fun(foo)
{
    ...
}

even though they ultimately mean the same thing. From a computer's
perspective, it's far easier to track scope with single-character
symbols (and it helps with editor paren-matching, too); IMO, from a
human's perspective it's far easier to track scope with meaningful
tokens than merely by space (especially since a single space error
can cause compile problems). Of course, judicious use of formatting
can make all of the things easier to read for the human.

-austin
-- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.09.08 at 00.34.23