Python-like tabs instead of curley brackets?

[Daniel Keep]

Charles Fox wrote:
> I've been following D for a few years now, and I'd like to suggest ditching
> the (now completely redundant) curley brackets from the C-like syntax and
> borrowing Python's use of tabs to replace them.   I see no reason to keep the
> curley brackets now we have nice editors that know about (and can display) tab
> characters.  The ideal programming language should have no redundancy, you
> shouldn't have to say anything twice, and at present we are still repearting
> ourselves with both curley brackets and indentation!  What do you think?

/delurk
/2cents

Curly-bracket languages are a pain because you end up with all those
redundant braces and parenthesis all over the place, when we all know
they're not *really* needed!

Offside-rule languages are a pain because any nested structure can't be
expressed inline, and you can end up with painful, subtle bugs, not to
mention lots of things play silly-buggers with whitespace since it's
"not important"!

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  Offside rule works for Python
because that's what it was designed with.  C-style works for D because
that's what it was designed with.

Another interesting thing is Lua code: it doesn't require you to use an
explicit statement separator; it's smart enough to "know" where
statements start and end.  And yet the majority of Lua code I've seen
uses those redundant semicolons and parenthesis.  Why?  Not really sure;
could be they're either so C-style brain-damaged they can't code without
compulsively hitting those keys (must... insert... delimiters...), or
they just like the additional explicitness.

I suppose in the end, it's all a matter of taste.  D programmers seem to
like curly braces.  It's as good a reason as any other :)  If you want
to see what a language with little to no redundancy looks like, go take
a peek at APL.  You may want to take a box of headache tablets with you...

	-- Daniel

P.S.  Also, I would suggest you go check out Nemerle:
<http://nemerle.org/Main_Page> - it's got both a C-style parser and a
Python-style parser.  It's a very cool language, irrespective :P

P.P.S.  You use TABs for Python code?  What blasphemy!  Everyone knows
that *FOUR SPACES* is superior to those pathetic tab characters!  :3

-- 
Unlike Knuth, I have neither proven or tried the above; it may not even
make sense.

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